Following on from last month’s article on the inimitable barrister Billy Rees-Davies, some further recollections are worth sharing, writes James Morton.

One problem with Billy was eating with him. It was no impediment to him that he had only one arm. The difficulty was that his remaining one tended to reach out for trifles that were not his. Once in an Indian restaurant with shared tables, he was eating the poppadoms of the man opposite. When I mentioned they belonged to the unfortunate chap, Billy replied, ‘Nonsense, any poppadom in my reach is my poppadom.’

Once, on a rare display of interest in the client, Billy had a conference during the lunch adjournment. This left him only a few minutes for a sandwich. In those days the bar did not go into the public canteen, and when Billy had picked up a ham sandwich, smeared it with mustard and went to pay, the cashier said: ‘I’ve told you before Mr Rees-Davies, you’re not allowed to eat here. You’ve your own place.’ Billy was not fazed. He carefully removed the mustard from the sandwich, which he replaced on the stack, said, ‘Charge the mustard up to me’, and stalked out.

One of the greatest regrets in my life is that I did not take up Billy’s offer of a night out in Tiger Bay for what he called a spot of ‘toot’, in the days when that word meant a spree involving women and drink. We were down in a bitterly cold Merthyr Tydfil, in a counterfeiting case before Tasker Watkins VC, when he made the offer. But the leader I had instructed quickly put paid to the idea, saying we should look at some statements that evening. Billy turned up looking very sorry for himself an hour into the case the next day. The leader then asked him if he could have a glass of water, and Billy went up to the judge’s bench, took Watkins’ carafe and walked off saying, ‘Don’t think yer Lordship’ll be needing this’.

Billy rarely pulled rank. But once, a member of his chambers had clashed with an Old Bailey judge and was being threatened with the Bar Council. He went to Billy, as head of chambers, to try to get him to intercede. ‘Was he in the Guards with you in the war, Billy,’ he ventured? ‘If he was, he certainly wasn’t an officer’, was the crushing reply.

Anyone with more recollections of Billy is invited to contact obiter@lawsociety.org.uk.

James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor