…the art of the well-placed, and even better, well-timed pun, accompanied with the throwaway panache to make the pun sound brilliant, is a talent given to very few… a few decades ago, when this ol’ Jurassic earned his coin in Her Britannic Majesty’s colony of Hong Kong, the court magistracy’s bench was populated almost exclusively by British, Kiwi and Aussie barristers and lawyers… one such giant of that learned profession has stories told about him which became ‘instant legend’ around the taverns of the expatriate brigades… we shall not print the name, in order to protect the guilty, but one particular sample of this gentlemen’s wit and speed of thought in the court room stands out… he was acting as Counsel for a husband whose wife was suing for divorce… the proceedings had turned rather nasty, with vitriol slinging across the court room, principally from the mouth of the supposedly maligned wife… the sitting judge was of the ancient variety, not the most alert legal creature ever to preside over domestic courtroom squabbles…
…Counsel had asked the wife to proffer some specific grounds as to why she sought to end the marriage… being somewhat flustered, she stammered, ‘well, he’d come home sometimes from trips abroad with these…these …social diseases‘… the poor Lord Judge, not being much of the world of affairs, in or out of wedlock, raised his eyebrows and leaned over to enquire of the wife, ‘social diseases?… what do you mean by social diseases?’… at this juncture, she became even more flustered and blurted out, ‘you know, social diseases… Venetian Disease’… the Judge looked askance, even more none-the-wiser, and beckoned to Counsel for enlightenment… the genius of the barristerial robes, raised his finger and explained, ‘Ah, m’Lord, a clear case of Gondolier!’…
…it is not recorded whether the lady won her case or not… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…
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