'The Rumpole of Rotherham' – The Times
Welcome to my world
Tuesday 9 October saw the publication of Junkies, Judges & Jail, the second book in my comic legal series.
If you’ve read my first book Boozers, Ballcocks & Bail, you’ll know that I’m not a writer by training – five bottom-grade O-levels were the height of my school attainments. But I do like telling stories, and I’ve come across a lot of them in my work as a criminal lawyer in the legal firm Wilford Smith in Rotherham in South Yorkshire.
I set up the firm with my mate Steve Wilford ('the stable one') after toiling as an office boy and progressing to the dizzy heights of legal executive, then taking night classes, getting a law degree and eventually becoming a lawyer.
Among the tales I tell in Junkies is the one about the accidental theft of a boa constrictor (along with 20,000 cigarettes and a Ford Transit), and others involving Fifi DuPont, Suki Deville and other exotically named ladies of the night. And there are some darker moments, too.
But as always, I aim to fight the corner of the little man (and woman).
I hope you enjoy the books – and look forward to meeting you over the next few months.
Stephen D. Smith