John Mortimer would have deserved to be remembered with some fondness had Rumpole of the Bailey been his only creation, or even the sole memorable product of his life’s work.
However, as those who have read the more timely obituaries will have seen (if they needed reminding), here was a man of considerable literary merit, producing highly acclaimed novels, plays and essays, who had also excelled in his first career, as a barrister.
I was fortunate enough to encounter John Mortimer, learned counsel, and also John Mortimer, gifted writer.
It was not quite my first big assignment on joining The Daily Telegraph in 1977; that honour belongs to the Case of the Manacled Mormon, the strange and for many people hilarious tale of Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming - no less - who had stalked a gauche, oversized Mormon missionary and ultimately kidnapped him, keeping him in a cottage in Devon where, he complained, she handcuffed him to a bed and forced him to have sex with her.
I was in court when she declared her love for the missionary in these terms: “I’d ski naked down Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose if he asked me.”
Sadly, Sir John was not involved in that case. But he did appear in the first big trial, or series of trials, that I covered on moving to Bristol as a regional reporter.
Anyone remember Operation Julie? Named after a police sergeant involved in the investigation, this was the case of a disparate band of clever graduates, hippies, drifters and Ordinary Decent Criminals who ran or took part in a huge conspiracy to mass-produce LSD and ensure its widest distribution.
Among the main participants were what one detective assured me were the “acidheads”, men and women who genuinely felt they were on a mission to turn on as many people as possible (there was even one claim that they planned to pour acid into the Birmingham water supply to send the whole city on hallucinatory trips), and the “breadheads”.
No prizes for guessing the next bit: the acidheads were committed to producing the purest, highest quality LSD tablets; the breadheads saw far greater sense in reducing the dose and maximising the profits.
John Mortimer appeared for David Solomon, a member of the first category of accused. He was a Californian author who, after pitching up in Cambridge, moved in lofty academic circles.
Solomon was also a disciple of the Timothy Leary “turn on, tune in, drop out” school of pro-drug thought. However foolish or naive he may have been, his motives were at least relatively untainted by greed, a point argued with great force in a long, sober speech of mitigation by Sir John that - as lawyers and reporters attending the trial agreed - probably sliced a couple of years off the sentence imposed.
The next time I met Sir John was eight years later at his London club, the Garrick. He had been hired at great cost by the Telegraph to write a series of long features.
His first was to be on the subject of a tour of the Middle East by the Prince and Princess of Wales; I was to be not only the travelling reporter, covering the detail of the tour itself, but also Sir John’s protector, the "minder" and guide of a man of letters caught in the midst of a bunch of grubby hacks.
I remember little of his resulting article, except that it dwelt a lot on the little ladders all the photographers lumped around with them to ensure some elevation when taking their endless pictures of Diana.
But I do remember the introductory Garrick lunch, which took the form of an unapologetically boozy cabaret in which my host passed irreverent comments on the reasonably well known lunchers at other tables. There was one cutting remark about the Labour politician Roy Hattersley (“doesn’t he look absurd?” - though I forget why), another about the broadcaster Robin Day (why do you suppose he wears his hair in that ridiculous style?) and some ribaldry about Kingsley Amis.
It was all very immature, I am sure, but it was also hugely entertaining. He went on to be a charming travelling companion when we went to Oman on the first leg of the tour. My own journey ended unexpectedly early because of a family bereavement, so I recall nothing of Sir John’s part in it beyond the photo* someone took of us together with Jean Rook, one of those rare newspaper journalists whose work (as a Daily Express columnist) brought her fame, as well - it should be added - as a spot of mockery from Private Eye.
Plenty of the things Sir John said or wrote have been noted elsewhere. I liked a couple of the things (mentioned in the Telegraph's obit) said by others about or to him. One demonstrated his inability to take even the courts too seriously; the other suggested the proper limits of sticking up for the criminal underdog.
Beginning his summing up to the jury in a trial Sir John had called the most boring ever to be heard, the judge said: “It may surprise you to know, members of the jury, that the sole purpose of the criminal law in England is not to entertain Mr Mortimer.”
And the other comment was made when he was defending some football yobs in the 1970s. A fellow lawyer turned to him and said that much as he felt an anarchist at heart, even “my darling old Prince Peter Kropotkin” - the Russian anarchist and communist - would have struggled to approve of “this lot”. With that remark, Sir John said later, Rumpole was born.
John Mortimer was 85, and died on Friday.
* That photograph, I am afraid, is among the files kept at my home in France (as I have also said in a response to "Tim" in the comments below). If and when I am reunited with it (home and/or photo), I will add it to this posting.
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