James Morton on how his attempt to become a stipendiary magistrate was sunk by a fine piece of creative writing

Some years ago I tired of criminal practice and decided I would like to become a stipendiary magistrate – or District Judge (criminal) for the younger readers – and I set about thinking whom I could ask to give me a reference.


Obviously a High Court judge would be a great help but I knew none, nor was I on anything but nodding terms with an Old Bailey judge; nodding when he entered court that is. A silk? Billy Rees-Davies was the obvious, in fact the only, choice but he was in the middle of one of his periodical spats with the Bar Council and in any event was still in disgrace over his part in the Christine Keeler affair.


What about a Member of Parliament? Billy Rees-Davies was the only MP I knew well, but for the reasons just stated he did not seem a good bet. I had met Essex MP Tom Driberg, but I held the unenviable distinction of being just about the only person whom he had never importuned. I was like Oscar’s page: ‘Far too ugly.’ I had met Sir Alec Douglas-Home in the men’s lavatory when I was a guest at the Carlton Club, but our conversation had run: ‘Cold snap this.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Be like this until after the Chelsea Flower Show.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Somehow if I prayed him in aid I did not think he would remember me.


I had once danced with April Ashley but again I doubted she would remember me and in any event one dance in a Chelsea nightclub would not be much of a recommendation.


Another solicitor? Again I didn’t really mix and I knew few famous practitioners who would vouch for me. I operated on a level with the man who, drunk of an afternoon, pushed prostitutes up my senior partner’s stairs. I realised to my chagrin that I really was a complete outsider in the hierarchy of the legal profession and, when it came to it, I did not know too many of the great and good outside it who might help.


I was, I believed, in good standing with my criminal clients but I did not think their endorsements (‘He’s had me chucked three times in the last year’) would carry any great weight. Nor, for that matter, would they be particularly pleased to hear of my proposed defection. If I did not succeed in my application I could see a sharply reduced practice in the future. I would have to look elsewhere.


Civil clients? They were very few, and, unlike those who could name film actors and actresses as every day visitors to their offices, I was again stymied. I had acted for a now long dead professional wrestler in a paternity suit. (‘Jim,’ he’d told me, ‘I wouldn’t mind having indigestion if I’d bit the apple.’) It might be that the then Lord Chancellor’s mother would recognise him as one of the blue-eyes of a Saturday afternoon, but I doubted His Lordship would.


There was a very famous and instantly recognisable person who had once been recommended to me in a civil case – quite why I never knew. I told my young receptionist she was to behave as if the likes of him were regular clients and that under no circumstances was she to ask for his autograph but I noticed she was wearing her new Gor-Ray skirt for the occasion (she had a friend who was a professional shoplifter). His first words to me were: ‘I’ve come without any dosh. Lend us a tenner for the cab.’ And things did not improve much from that point. In fairness the bill and the taxi-cab advance were settled by return but I could see there would be no help from that quarter with my judicial aspirations.


And so I settled on one of the more louche stipendiaries whom, quite by chance, I saw one afternoon exiting the Venus Rooms in Old Compton Street after court and took the opportunity of pressing him into my service.


He must have written something pleasant because eventually I had my interview but that went no better than mine with the very famous person. I had written an article for a national newspaper suggesting that to help with the crisis in the NHS the government should consider appointing lay doctors who would conduct minor operations and in more serious cases, such as heart by-passes, undertake exploratory work. They could be advised as to the difference between the anus and the humerus by a fifth-year medical student or a retired matron. If they got, say, a vasectomy wrong it could be reversed by a qualified doctor. Some would, in time, become quite good at it. It seemed to me that this was really no different from the situation with JPs. I had thought it both clever and witty.


My interviewer did not even offer me a cup of tea. Instead he drank his and ate a series of what used to be called squashed fly biscuits. The crunch question came at the last when he had finished chewing. ‘Did you write this?’ he asked, raising the offending – and to him offensive – article. For a brief second I thought I might say, no, it was my identically named twin, but the George Washington in me prevailed and I shamefacedly admitted guilt. Now I knew how my clients felt – justice as ritual humiliation. ‘Do you really think this will help in your dealings with your future, I should say, potentially future colleagues?’ The best I could reply was, ‘I would not have written if I had not thought it correct’. And so, for another few years, it was back to trailing down to ‘Calle Nick’, as my clients called Caledonian Road Police Station where they seemed always to fetch up at midnight.


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