Lawyers have a secret addiction…television. The Insider tells all
The Insider has been reviewing the Christmas TV schedules to decide upon her holiday entertainment. You might think that, living at the cutting edge in the 24-hour city that is modern London, the telly would be the option of last resort for your intrepid and young-at-heart reporter. However, this year as always I will be making the trek up north to Lancashire—county flower: the turnip; county colour: bruise; county slogan: It’s not the end of the world…but you can see it from here!
I’m not suggesting that entertainment is thin on the ground in my mum’s town, but since I’m too old to join in the teenage pregnancy sweepstakes, too miserly to join in the Trafford Centre bling-athon and too classy to join in the Yates’s Wine Lodge sponsored heave, I’m relying on the good old cathode rays to tide me over the coming week.
TELLY ADDICTS
Lawyers are, in my experience, dedicated telly addicts. Aside from binge drinking, boasting about annual bonuses (Magic Circle lackeys!) and daydreaming about annual leave, watching television is one of the favourite pastimes among my peers, partly because after a 15- or 16-hour day, a quick wind-down in front of the plasma screen is an absolute must, gracious living wise. Not that I wish to imply that I have a plasma screen; I currently watch my late mother-in-law’s telly, a Matsui circa 1995 which is on its last legs—for the first 10 minutes after switching it on, the screen keeps going white; the first time this happened I thought my years of stress, high blood pressure and cakes were catching up on me and not in a good way.
Lawyers’ choice of television and indeed radio programmes can tell you a lot about them. You get the genuinely young ones/media types who are into the very modern dance stations, where every other word has been silenced out for erotic and/or scatological and/or racially insensitive content, such that on a bad day it sounds like Norman “the…icro…one’s not wor…ing” Collier.
A fair proportion of older lawyers also follow these kinds of stations, and if they also drive a BMW Roadster or any other hairdresser’s car and come in on dress-down Fridays in anything resembling street fashion, you can invariably wind them up by standing at the water cooler, popping a Berocca while you talk about your evening at Mahiki. Not that I hang out there, you understand; the last time I rubbed shoulders with royalty was when Prince Andrew and I happened to be at Shoeless Joe’s on the Embankment about seven years ago.
I was with a group including one trainee who proceeded to drink me under the table—and not many can say that—before announcing very loudly: “Hey! I’ve got a great idea! Let’s trash this place!” Luckily HRH had disappeared with Tom Parker Bowles by this stage, and I was able to make my excuses and leave.
YUMMY MUMMIES
You then get the yummy mummy (and daddy) type of lawyer who is well up on Charlie and Lola, Tracy Beaker et al. I have friends, highly trained, educated lawyers, whose knowledge of the Civil Procedure Rules may be sound, but whose knowledge of Little Einsteins is frightening. I must admit that, during my freelance days I developed a sneaking fondness for Pocoyo, but drew the line at Blue Peter—it’s never been the same since Biddy Baxter left. These parents, frazzled though their nerves might be trying to keep career and family on the go, have a lot better idea about what really matters than the million-a-year City partners with their hollow eyes and empty souls.
SUPPORT STAFF
It would be a generalisation and an unfair one at that, to suggest that only the support staff follow shows such as Jeremy Kyle and I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! It must be admitted that since my flatmate moved out, my appetite for such fare as Hell’s Kitchen, How to Look Good Naked, Big Brother et al—which she followed assiduously—has waned, but this is not due to some po-faced assertion that these shows are beneath me. Rather, with the flat to myself I am now entertaining much more and I tend not to invite people around only to watch Cerys Matthews interacting with something vile—yes, Marc Bannerman, I do mean you.
SENIOR PARTNERS
Senior partner types, in contrast, tend to be big on weighty historical documentaries about the Empire, World War II and the good old days before the Human Rights Act, employment protection and equal opportunities legislation. If it has Betty Grable, or someone similarly proportioned—Jordan at a pinch, but with more aitches—so much the better.
My own dear mum is the senior partner of the James family firm and as such holds absolute sway over the remote; luckily her fondness for such shows as Strictly Come Dancing is quite easy to take. After a very full and, dare I say it, rather trying year, the prospect of sitting on her sofa, mince pie in hand, cup of builder’s tea on the go, Jack the dog in his basket as a handy scapegoat for any sprout-related indiscretions and Bruce Forsyth on the Phillips—an even older vintage than my Matsui: my father bought it when Channel 4 started broadcasting and Cadman’s of Chorley have nursed it through thunderstorms and power surges ever since—is most welcome.
There is the prospect of To The Manor Born to look forward to and (if all else fails) the entire canon of Morecambe and Wise Christmas Specials on DVD which I will be taking with me. Time enough, when I return to the metropolis, to indulge in the heady pleasures of Casino Royale, Heroes and Emmerdale.
THE INSIDER’S TOAST
So, dear reader, may your wishes all be granted, may your timesheets all be filled and may your clients suddenly get a conscience and pay your outstanding bills in time for little Piers to get a Wii for his Santa gift. I raise my glass, or should I say my teacup, and toast your happiness and prosperity at this special time of year and for 2008. See you in January!
Jennifer James is the Insider
