Charon QC has been celebrating the demise of the celebrity chef. While bemoaning the dishonesty of chefs who delegate the menial labour of mere cooking to underlings, while said chef punches an innocent punter for the benefit of his reputation & attentive paparazzi, he makes a well intended but fatally flawed analogy:
I put to you this postulate: If a person in need of legal advice briefed a famous Silk and then found that famous Silk had told his sous-barrister to handle it would that be fair? One cannot imagine such a situation ever arising in our beautiful Game - yet Chefs get away with it all the time.
Geeklawyer recalls well an incident from his pupillage days at the shipping set Titanic Chambers of Upper Temple (motto: “we may sink your case but we can at least salvage our fee note“). Gorvis Jocker QC (a QC who had hit rough financial times through some poor investment decisions) had been instructed by a south east council in some matter of considerable import to it & its ratepayers. The exorbitant sum of £1000 was agreed for his opinion on this very important matter; this was in the days when £1000 could get you a decent suit. Now, Gorvis had something of a reputation in chambers. He would get juniors to devil for him and not pay them. Having drained chamber’s junior tenants of goodwill he, astonishingly, asked Geeklawyer to draft his advice. Geeklawyer is known well for fatal modesty and so to him the idea of a QC asking him, a second six pupil, to do his work was astonishing.
Nor has Geeklawyer heard of this happening elsewhere since. Gorvis would, of course, have reviewed it, possibly made a few trivial amendments, & signed it as his own; and devilling is a well established and proper delegation within the Bar, but …
[Gorvis mumbled vague promises of a fee at some point but Gorvis’ mistress was so in love with him that she warned Geeklawyer of her beloved’s reputation. Geeklawyer suddenly realised that he had numerous briefs to read for his pupilmaster and was too busy to assist Gorvis.]
So CharonQC: your brother QCs and celeb chefs have more than their bank balances in common.
Ah… you have read and have seen the meaning… remember… Luke… feel the force…
And… with that I leave you this Boxing day night… to watch the cricket…. because I am an optimist and believe… that England can still play cricket.
To my astonishment both ‘Gorvis’ & ‘Jocker’ are real names and not the fictitious pseudonym for the all too real ***** QC I’d imagined. Thank heavens there IS no Gorvis Jocker QC or I’d be having an Artemus Jones moment, and, like the Xmas turkey, I’ve overindulged alleged defamation of late
Geeklawyer… it will come as no surprise to you that our government now want to give ‘Blue Peter’ style badges to people who are awarded/ win honours ( I do not wih to suggest, in any way, that the Bingo/Raffle/gaming laws of Great britain are now being rent assunder by the award of honours) )…. so they can pin them to their lapels….much easier than tarting about in ermine or wearing a GCMG medal, sash etc etc… when one pops into ‘town’ or slopes of to a Putney wine bar . Have you ever been to Putney?…
(I am pretty sure I saw this story in the Independent today… the ‘badges’ bit…but I could be wrong)
Why would any mature person actually want to proclaim their ’status’ with a lapel badge? This ‘lapel badge’ plan will be announced by our ‘Saturday Swopshop’ government at the same time as they announce the 2007 honours.
I am going to spend some time this weekend making a lapel badge for myself. I have a feeling that it may resemble a lobster. God in heaven…’gee gaws and baubles…as we used to say when I was a ‘wee bairn’ in Glasgow… and, of course, at Bannockburn
I despair….
Citizen Charon
Can I tell your readers…that your blog software does not seem to be able to handle my appalling typing / typos… whereas, my own blog software - behaves impeccably…
CharonQC: I rather like the idea of Blue Peter style Honours badges. It may well, like VCs, lead to a thriving after market & I fancy buying my New Years Honour - after all it’s what happens now anyway and this way everyone gets a stab at it.
I won’t comment on your typos other than to say they are an effective sobriety indicator! They would be for me too, but these days I use the Firefox 2 web browser which has an in-built spell-checker and it is much harder to make mistakes: though one must remember to select the option of using the only true English, British English. Failing that one may utter a howler like ‘color’, oh dear, oh dear. No.
I think this whole “lobster” thing that is swimming about in each of our sub-conscious is due to my having christened Ruthie “Lobster Bib Lady”.
Glad to know that I have contributed somehow.
Can I have a Lobster with a tiny calculator in one claw?
Mary: like most Canadians you are steeped in wicked and glutinous sin. Nor need you pretend that the lobster meme was accidental: you are malicious evil and wicked.
Bad Bad Mary.
you say that as if it were a bad thing Geekie.
I am very bad, very bad in deed… oh ever shall I learn my lesson?
I still want the lobster with a calculator in its claw.
Apparently it costs fifteen quid to get one of these lapel buttons. Please do make one Charon becuase the polite English will notice it but never comment or ask what you got it for… And given that most people wont really know exactly what they look like you don’t have to make a very good copy. In fact you could make something up entirely and people would probably still be fooled.
Ruthie wonders how long it will be before the first one appears on E Bay..
To Mary: I think the lobster motif was used by Charon, before the bib incident. I’m not sure what the connection is between Charon and lobsters though: perhaps he can enlighten us.
Geeklawyer had been charged with designing some T shirts for this site as well as organising the blawging conference. So readers are invited to suggest suitable motifs and slogans…
For an extra five quid, we’ll do some with “I love Ruthie” on the back
honestly Ruthie, you and your shameless self promotion. Anyway why would I pay a fiver for someone to wear that on their back?