Those people in the Corporate world and in the habit of joining round table meetings will be familiar with approaches to ice-breakers at the start. The most common of these is for everyone to give one interesting or unusual fact about themselves.
I normally go for this:
• I was once deliberately electrocuted by the most senior person in the UK judiciary for crimes against his daughter
Interesting, but rarely believed – and there’s never time to explain. A number of people that get this blog will have heard this before, so here is the explanation:
As a child, a man called Igor Judge was a lawyer in a small town near my parents and lived in the same Northamptonshire village.
He had an interest in Victorian gadgets and memorabilia. One of these was an electrocution device with a winding handle and 2 hand grips through which it gave a sequence of electric shocks.
It was used to treat nervous disorders and, later on, as an attempt to treat shell shock.
When I was around 7, there was an open gardens event in the village during which I was chasing his daughter around his garden. He thought that sort of behaviour was best treated with that device and electrocuted me.
Igor Judge was rapidly promoted, and for a period actually became Judge Judge.
Most people would have been so overwhelmed by the comic potential there that they would have stopped.
He didn’t though and is now Lord Chief Justice Baron Igor Judge – head of the Judiciary for England and Wales (but not of Scotland I notice)
Of course, this entire story is reliant on my 7 year old memory and, whilst my father remembers him having the gadget, he can’t be certain he was the one that actually wound the handle. As such, there’s a risk this Blog is actually libellous.
I read the story of someone who was imprisoned recently for saying something offensive on Twitter about a footballer who had a heart attack on the pitch.
I assume he said something really quite offensive, but nevertheless it does ring alarm bells for someone who has just accused the Lord Chief Justice of a crime.
He has significantly more legal muscle than me and, on legal matters, I believe answers only to the Queen.
I thought I would adopt a pre-emptive defence and send a message to her explaining my bona fides, as I think legal folk say.
Twitter was the obvious method to communicate with a busy woman like her.
The Hash Tag #HRH didn’t work though and #QUEEN did work but not in exactly the way I’d anticipated.
As you may remember, my various previous campaigns have not always gained the level of support I’d hoped for.
This time though, the campaign is Justice for the Northamptonshire One – and it could really matter, so please provide your support as comments on this Blog
Further to that, I plan to fallback on the following new armoury of campaign approaches to strengthen my case:
i) Ask Steven Fry to Twat about it on his Twitter page. Everyone else with something to whinge about asks him to do that
ii) …this one hurts… ask my wife’s ex-boyfriendRichard Wiseman to provide his support, since he has become influential in the media
iii) Break for the Scottish border and taunt Baron Judge from there. I don’t imagine the Scottish in general like me much either but if I just put on a Tartan dress it should be enough to get them on my side and stop me being extradited.
They are generally simple folk after all.
Eat cake
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I wouldn’t put on a tartan dress if I were you Dave. My ex-father in law (who was – actually still is – Scottish) knew a guy that started going to Scotland a lot and who took up kilt-wearing with a real gusto. To cut a long story short this guy ended up getting a sex-change. Turned out the kilt-wearing thing was just a ruse to wear dodgily-patterned skirts in public. You (or more importantly Emma) have been warned!
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hahaha, would love to see you in a tartan dress! I will visit you in jail (but not in a tartan dress!) if it comes to that!
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Dear Dave – I favour your break for the borders option – I’m hazy on the exact detail of history, but I believe hiding in oak trees is the done thing in such circumstances. But wear warm socks and take your blackberry through which you can carry on your campaign.
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Love it! I’ll support you Dave and happy to visit you in jail, Even, I suppose, if you’re sporting a kilt! Have you thought about contacting the daughter whom you chased on that fateful day for her support now? Not thy she did much to support you back then – probably snitched to get you into trouble in the first place but for all you know she’s felt guilty for ( oooh it must be nearly 30?) years for getting you electrocuted in the first place and might be glad to gain some absolution at long last!
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Looked her up and she is now The Honourable Helen Judge, which implies to me she now has considerable legal muscle as well.
As such, I think I’ll leave that stone unturned
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Fair enough. Stumbled upon the attached useful link tonight and thought of you!! http://www.thediamondjubilee.org/send-message-queen
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Your biggest problem as I see it is that you did n’t write ‘alleged crimes against his daughter’
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