They say that politics is showbiz for ugly people – but with the rise of the radiantly beauteous Keminator (and, grudgingly, for the eyelashes, Soft-Lad Burnham) this is no longer true, though Zack Polanski is bravely still flying the flag. I’d say these days that it was truer of the legal profession, especially the limousine-chasers among them who often end up working for celebrities; it would be interesting to see what proportion of those currently strutting and pontificating in courts of law originally dreamt of treading the boards.
Everything about this puffed-up popinjay is absurd
Exhibit one, Jolyon Maugham. As Gareth Roberts has pointed out, everything about this puffed-up popinjay is absurd; even his name seems like something out of PG Wodehouse, perhaps as a character for whom a girl that Bertie Wooster is sweet on has a baffling crush. Which would come to a pleasing finish, perhaps, when he killed a fox with a baseball bat on Boxing Day while wearing a tight green female kimono – as Maugham memorably boasted on X in 2019.
Before he was born-again as a rampant crusader for social justice he was a tax lawyer who helped the rich and famous keep as much of their money as possible. Notably, he represented ‘Eclipse 35’, a scheme which claimed to finance films while enabling those swizzle-sticks involved to obtain huge amounts of tax relief ‘as a reward for supporting the British film industry,’ as the Daily Telegraph wrote in 2015. ‘The Eclipse 35 scheme was branded a cover story for tax avoidance by the Court of Appeal which had helped investors escape £117million in taxes. David Gauke, the financial secretary to the Treasury, branded investors in the scheme including Sir Alex Ferguson, the former Manchester United manager, and Sven-Göran Eriksson, the former England manager, as “tax dodgers”.’
Was it hanging around the likes of the star-dusted Gary Barlow which led young Jolyon off the straight and narrow, away from the social activism which was surely his fate? Did the scales fall from his eyes one day when listening to a Robbie Williams records and realising that he was on the wrong side?
Whatever, he performed a majestic pivot in 2017 when he founded the not-for-profit (I’ll say; their crowdfunding antics have brought in piles of cash, but their track record of victories in court is hardly impressive) Good Law Project.
Marking Maugham’s move from Cavalier to Roundhead, the GLP’s very name is so deliciously prim and asking-for-it, like calling a daughter ‘Chastity’ and her likelihood of becoming a right royal ‘goer’.
Naughtily, they still don’t seem to have had enough of the soft-hearted civilian’s (Liz Hurley’s word for non-actors) moolah (I daresay those kimonos won’t buy themselves) as just the other day the GLP featured a prominent general DONATE button alongside a petition demanding an inquiry into press coverage of the Jason Arday case which sneakily disappeared after someone spotted it.
Maugham completed his flounce-a-thon by insulting the respected retired barrister Barbara Rich, who dared to query the GLP’s offshore structure; earlier this year, it altered its ownership structure, the flamboyant fox-finisher being replaced with a ‘Jersey-based’ trust. It was a shoo-in that Maugham would bustle off to Instagram to label Ms Rich ‘a classic internet troll – even if dressed in the sort of polite white grandmother clothes that those who have never bothered to examine their biases assume equates to civilised’ which Rich rightly identified as ‘a trifecta of ageism, sexism and racism’. Considering that he was dressed in his wife’s kimono when he ruined poor Reynard, this interest in the lady’s outfit seems suspect – as, it must be admitted, do most things about this ridiculous creature.
Maugham completed his flounce-a-thon by insulting the respected retired barrister Barbara Rich
Not a bit ridiculous but definitely showbiz-adjacent is David Sherborne, who Maugham must dream of being. Dashing and in demand, believed to charge around a thousand pounds an hour for his services, how he must have dazzled Prince Harry with his worldly ways and winning words when they met at – of course! – Elton John’s house in the south of France in 2018. It’s pitiably easy to imagine the impressionable princeling – probably after a few shandies – being quite swept away by the picture of public sympathy and copious cash which could come his way after a judgement against the Mail, and getting over-excited at the thought of being on the barricades with sexy stars like Sadie Frost.
Sherborne – nicknamed “Orange Sherbert’ due to his auburn locks – is a striking figure. Harry Mount, who once worked in the same chambers, called him ‘the Zelig of celebrity media cases…his list of clients since he was called to the Bar in 1992 reads like the most dazzling little black book on the planet. Princess Diana, Donald and Melania Trump, Chelsea Clinton, Paul McCartney, Tony and Cherie Blair, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Kate Moss, David Walliams, Elton John, the Spice Girls, the Beckhams, Paul Gascoigne and Mike Tyson.’ Add to that Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Amy Winehouse, Cheryl Cole, Lily Allen, Harry Styles, Sienna Miller and the inevitable Hugh Grant. But the moment when he entered the pop culture was in 2022 when he represented Coleen Rooney in the ‘Wagatha Christie’ case, which came about when Rebekah Vardy foolishly brought a libel action against Mrs R. He was subsequently played by Michael Sheen in a Channel 4 drama; you can imagine him being gracious about it, but perhaps secretly believing that he himself might have done a much better job playing himself.
But it must be the late George Carman who is the most portrayed showbiz lawyer; by Adrian Scarborough in the 2018 miniseries A Very English Scandal, by David Suchet in 2002’s Get Carman: The Trials of George Carman QC, and also by Clive Hayward on the 2019 radio drama Happiness, which dealt with the tax evasion trial of the alarming Ken Dodd. Nicknamed ‘Gorgeous George’ and ‘Killer Carman’ he became in media circles as famous as his clients, who ranged from Dodd to Jeremy Thorpe. He would switch sides, sometimes working for the papers against celebs and sometimes the reverse; at his funeral could be seen Mohamed Al Fayed, Cherie Blair and the editors of the Sun, Private Eye and the Guardian. His friend Frederick Forsyth was fulsome in his praise; ‘There was nothing mean or base to the man. He was a master of his art. To his clients he was a staunch and tireless defender. To his opponents he was a formidable adversary but always scrupulously fair.’ This portrait of Carman as a cross between Antonio Stradivari and Albert Schweitzer was contradicted somewhat by his son Dominic’s book, which portrayed him as an alcoholic wife-beater.
The era of the big-name showbiz lawyer may be over now, after the massive defeat of Prince Harry and his chums, now staring at a legal bill of up to £34.5million. There was a strange, slightly surreal echo of a bygone age when poor Jason Arday had the law firm of Carter-Ruck send a warning letter to Jack Grove of the Times Higher Educational Supplement. Though Carter-Ruck continue to thrive as a law practice, they are not in the news as much as when their fearsome founder, Peter Carter-Ruck ‘sort of invented libel as an industry,’ according to his former colleague David Hooper. The entertainment-adjacent lawyers, the Showbiz Silks, will continue to strut in their wigs and gowns, but like the actors they mix with and emulate, they are as easily ridiculed as respected in our online world – as the ongoing comedy of errors which is Jolyon Maugham’s career illustrates.
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