Gearing up for laughs: to Manchester, for the Motor Accident Solicitors Society annual conference, always a well-attended event where one hopes that none of the participants drive home after the, erm, lively evenings for fear that they would later find a fellow delegate suing them. Probably the biggest laugh of the conference was won by former Association of Personal Injury Lawyers president Ian Walker, who bemoaned the four-page letter of claim that solicitors now have to produce. He recalled with apparent fondness the short-and-sweet missive that Thompsons (the great rival of his former firm, Russell Jones & Walker, of course) used to send to insurers. It went, he said, something like this: 'We act for so and so. He was injured in this accident. Give us the money, you bastards.'


Speaking later, John Usher of Unite the union - and formerly a partner at Thompsons - remembered one time when he came across some drunken defendant insurance lawyers, who accused his old firm with some venom of being 'monosyllabic bastards'. Mr Usher seemed rather proud of the description.