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.