Fam­ily Lore reports that Mr Jus­tice Singer was just ordered to step down form a case for mak­ing a few poor jokes. In the mat­ter of El Farargy v El Farargy and Oth­ers he made a cou­ple of faintly amus­ing quips about using a “fly­ing car­pet” to avoid/evade costs and poor qual­ity gelati­nous evi­dence that he said was “a bit like Turk­ish delight.” The remarks were made in a closed hear­ing.
Appar­ently this upset the del­i­cate feel­ings of the Saudi sheik. Lord Jus­tice Ward of the Court of Appeal sent Singer his march­ing orders whilst say­ing that while he felt humour was a good way of eas­ing court ten­sion, even where the jokes were bad, here the sin was not to tell bad jokes but to tell thor­oughly bad jokes.

“My Lord: What do you call a bar­ris­ter with an IQ of 10? lawyer.

So, my Lord: What do you call a bar­ris­ter with an IQ of 15? My Lord.”