Genteel insults
The execrations of British lawyers have usually been as measured and restrained as those used by British polite society in general when it is outraged.
When John Cleese’s TV hotelier Basil
Fawlty was irate with his hotel’s assistant Polly, he fulminated: “I’ll ruin you. You’ll never waitress in Torquay again.”
When FE Smith, the distinguished lawyer and aloof Conservative MP, was asked by JH Thomas, a new Labour MP, where the House of Commons’ toilets were, Smith is reputed to have replied: “Go further down this corridor. You’ll see a sign saying ‘Gentlemen’ but don’t let that deter you.”
