Geoffrey Rutter’s comments on defended divorces remind me of the days when fashionable barristers could appear in lists of those about whom the readers of popular newspapers would like to read, writes James Morton.

In 1935, barrister Norman Birkett appeared in 20th place, equal with the Aga Khan and just behind actress Gracie Fields, in a Daily Express poll.

Many barristers’ fame came from murder trials or society divorces. Women in fashionable hats would queue for hours to get into the public gallery to hear the sordid details.

I can only remember acting in a few defended divorces, with very little success I seem to recall, and they were certainly not for le tout London.

One client was adamant that, as a God-fearing man, he had not treated his wife badly by swearing at her and generally abusing her. His cross-examination went well until he was asked what he said one Sunday when his wife was late for church. ‘I told the flaming whore to get out of her stinking pit,’ was his frank reply. Decree nisi.

And if you did get to decree nisi stage, there was the fear of the Queen’s Proctor intervening if your client hadn’t confessed his or her own misdeeds.

In lower-middle class suburbs in the 1960s, there was always the fear a nosy neighbour’s curtains would twitch, and she would write denouncing your client for having a member of the opposite sex to stay the night.

To defeat that, there was the discretion statement – a penitent few lines tucked away in an envelope to be produced when the spouse’s wicked behaviour had been recited – about how passion had run away (only once) with the young man or woman the client was hoping to marry.

Or there was the awful confession that, after the office party, the client had slunk off to the Regent Palace Hotel (or similar) and ‘intercourse had taken place’. If His Lordship (there were no Ladyships) would forgive her, it would never happen again. Promise.

I think the best discretion statement I ever heard was one produced by former barrister and High Court judge Sir John Owen, who died just before Christmas. When he asked his client if she had committed adultery, she replied she had, once, on the stopping train from Sutton Coldfield to Birmingham. When he asked whether her paramour had spoken to her, she replied that he had not; but that he had raised his hat as he disembarked at his stop.

James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor.