By the time I met Norbert ‘Mad Fred’ Rondel, the club owner acquitted of organising the robbery which led to the Spaghetti House siege in 1975, he was a relatively benign old man selling second-hand cars in Lambeth. Could I find him a computer to help with the resurrection of his claim that he could sue his former barrister for negligence?

He had had a hard life. Abandoned in Berlin as a child by his family and brought to England as a kindertransportee, he studied at a rabbinical college. Following a breakdown, he spent long periods in mental hospitals throughout the country before he began wrestling as the Polish Eagle and working as an enforcer for Peter Rachman.

In the summer of 1959, Rondel was charged with GBH following a dancehall fight. Refused legal aid at the Old Bailey, the young Michael Worsley took the case on a dock brief, receiving £2 4s 6d. Found guilty and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment, Rondel maintained that he had not been properly defended, claiming that he had not cut his victim’s ear, as charged, but merely bitten off part of it. Acting in person in 1965 he sued Worsley for negligence.

Had the case been tried on its merits, Rondel would have quickly lost, but instead it was argued on the legal point that a barrister could not be sued.

Rondel lost the point and appealed. Again with no legal aid but helped by Professor Michael Zander, he appeared on his own behalf in the Court of Appeal. Zander prepared an American-style pleading running to more than 100 pages, but was not allowed to read it on Rondel’s behalf nor to answer submissions made on Worsley’s behalf. So Zander prepared another statement for Rondel, whose English was fractured, to read out. The court did, however, allow Rondel, a yoga devotee, time out to stand on his head in the corridor to clear his thoughts. Unsurprisingly, he lost, but he earned a place in legal history when their lordships said that this lack of representation must not be allowed to happen again.

Rondel appealed to the House of Lords. This time he was fully represented, but their lordships were quite clear that, as a matter of public policy, a barrister could not be sued for negligence.

Rondel did live to see the law changed in 2002. Not that it did him any good.

James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor