James Morton recalls the chequered career of his opera-loving cousin David, and how he added yet another type of client to his legal practice

In the early days of my practice as a solicitor, I considered myself put upon not only by my senior partner, Simpson, but also by the world in general.


It was not he but I who had to down tools and shepherd around the law courts visiting Americans whom Simpson had met on some holiday cruise, when all they really wished was to be shown Rumpole’s chambers and the exact spot where Eliza Dolittle met Professor Higgins.


However, it was not Simpson’s clients but my Australian cousin, David, who was the heaviest cross I had to bear. I had at the time a small mews flat in Marylebone. David had come to London to seek his fortune as an opera singer with what was then the Sadler’s Wells company. He had been touring as Freddie in ‘My Fair Lady’ in such cultural outposts as Alice Springs and Ballarat and someone had advised him that he was wasting his talent and should try London. My mother thought I could put him up for a few days until he found his feet.


David had certain technical problems. He had come to music late in life and had not quite the voice for Grand Opera or quite the stage technique for operetta. The company itself was in a period of transition, and so for the time being he had to rely on sporadic engagements elsewhere.


But generally, he never seemed to leave the flat, instead lolling around all day in a short white towelling jacket, an overdose of Brut and not much else. Instead of paying any rent, he undertook to do the cooking but I quickly put a stop to this when delicacies such as rabbit in whisky and ginger biscuit cream sauce appeared on the table.


My major concern was that he was a devout television viewer. When he heard my key in the latch if I returned early from court, he would call out, ‘Quick, James it’s “Crackerjack”’. Whole evenings were spent watching ‘All Our Yesterdays’ and the news until, because in those days television ceased at around midnight, we both stood while ‘God Save the Queen’ was played and a black and white Union Jack fluttered across the screen. He would then wave at the blank screen and say, ‘Night, night. See you in the morning’.


Apart from anything else it was greatly hampering what passed as my love life.


When I approached my mother, a great ham actor herself, she was dismissive. ‘He’s learning stagecraft,’ she said. ‘You can’t learn stagecraft from “Pinky and Perky”’, I responded, I thought cleverly, but it did me no good.


In fairness, David was extremely useful at sending me clients of the loucher variety. He was out and about in Soho in what were allegedly drinking clubs but whose members signed in as Charles Chaplin and Michael Mouse. These establishments were forever being raided and the managers, if not the owners, prosecuted.


The evidence was always pretty standard. The police would camp out – if that is the correct expression – for a few nights in the clubs drinking happily away at the expense of the public. Then when ‘men wearing lipstick and rouge were dancing with other men and the defendant Smith was on the edge of the dance floor doing what appeared to be a tango by himself’, the inspector would blow a whistle, his sergeant would turn on the lights and it was a question of sauve qui peut la vie. And for those who didn’t it was off to Inner London Sessions to answer charges of running a disorderly house. In reality, by today’s standards, it was all very innocent.


Somehow, fortunately, David was never on the premises when this happened, but the next day at the same time as the sign for the Kit Kat Kabaret was being removed and the Grotto Bleu Haunt being erected in its place and a new manager found, he was on hand to point them in my direction. And, as a result, poor Simpson’s knitting ladies found themselves sitting next to not only the rougher type of armed robber but also a number of gentlemen dressed in, and smelling of, lavender.


They were extremely gregarious and garrulous and, in fact, I think the ladies were rather charmed by the adventures of their new companions. It made a change from stories of ‘dropping brown foxes on the pavements’. However, Simpson was not so impressed with this additional arm of his practice.


Several things contributed to David’s departure, with the more telling incident being when he obtained work bolstering an out- of-town choral society. The television was playing up and when it shuddered to a halt while I was watching a particularly engrossing Randolph Scott western, I gave it a good belt and it died there and then.


My resolve was steely. I said nothing about the death on David’s return, but the next evening he remarked: ‘The telly’s not working, when are you going to get it repaired?’ ‘I’m not,’ I said, ‘Summer’s coming. It’s time to be out and about a bit more’. He was gone within the week to stay with some Aussie stewardesses he knew in Notting Hill.


James Morton is a former criminal law specialist solicitor and now a freelance journalist