Back in the 1960s and 70s, in a hopeless case – for example, if the defendant refused to plead guilty to bank robbery even though he had been photographed inside the bank, had three identifying witnesses, and was found with the money stuffed behind his fireplace and had made a written confession – the man for the job was Billy Rees-Davies, writes James Morton. Not for him the mealy-mouthed returned brief on the eve of the trial, ‘Mr Smith is part heard in Birmingham’. If the client wanted to go down with all guns blazing, there would be Billy at his side in a forensic version of the gunfight at the OK Corral, and just sometimes it would be the Clantons who defeated Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

The son of the one-time chief justice of Hong Kong, Billy had been victor ludorum at Eton and, I believe, while playing for Cambridge had taken the wicket of Don Bradman. Admittedly, the Don was somewhere in the two hundreds at the time.

Billy lost his right arm in the war, but this did not seriously hamper him in any way. ‘I’ll do this single-handedly’, he would tell the jury. He would accept help from no one. I have never seen anyone fillet fish more neatly. In the days before automatic gear boxes, he also drove a left-hand-drive car with abandon, and often not enough attention.

‘Billy, you’ve hit that parked car.’

‘Nonsense, a gentle caress.’

There was, however, one serious problem in instructing him. You could never guarantee that he would actually turn up. There was always the chance he had gone to Ascot or Epsom.

I remember watching a middle-aged and overweight solicitor trundle down the Old Bailey to what were then the West Courts, only to be told by the usher standing outside in the sun: ‘No need to hurry Mr H. Your counsel left for Sotheby’s in a taxi half an hour ago.’

It was in front of the mild-mannered ‘Jolly’ Judge Rogers at the Old Bailey that I saw Billy at his most brazen. He appeared 10 minutes late, and launched straight away into the prosecution’s witness.

‘Now then Bloggs – you’re a liar, aren’t you?’

Rogers said reproachfully: ‘You’re late, Mr Rees-Davies, haven’t you something to say?’

‘Yes,’ replied Billy, ‘yer Lordship’s clock’s fast. I noticed it yesterday but I fergot to tell you. Now then Smith – you’re a liar, aren’t you?’

James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor