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“I am a freak in terms of what has happened to me over the years. It feels like 20 lifetimes have been crammed into my career.”
His parents, from a middle class background in Pakistan, came to Liverpool in the 60s to escape family disapproval of their love marriage.
His father became a bus driver and the only Asian member of the local Tory party.
He and Anwar’s mother, a secretary, worked overtime to give their son a private education when Anwar landed bottom of the class at primary.
Socially, Anwar became stateless, a “snob” in his working class street and a “gobby Pakistani” at private school.
His childhood was a gauntlet of racism and ricocheting around a no man’s land of the class divide.
His sister Saiqa was an A-grade student, graceful and disciplined, while his report said: “Polite in class but outside acts like an animal.”
He said: “If someone said something, I had to fight back but I was a s*** fighter. I would always get a doing. My gob would get me into trouble.’’
His father was loving but a “hardcore disciplinarian” who slapped five year-old Anwar when he didn’t fight back against boys who had beaten him. He said: “I never told him after that, if I got a doing or got bullied.”
At home, he withdrew into books and when he headed to university in Glasgow, to study first engineering, then politics, he joined the Anti-Nazi League and became a revolutionary socialist and student activist.
In 1991, Anwar was assaulted by police while he was flyposting. An officer bounced his head off the road and smashed his teeth, telling him “this is what happens to black boys with big mouths”.
It took him six months to tell his parents. He said: “My mum burst into tears, my dad asked what I had done wrong. He believed British justice could do no wrong.”
He righted the wrong in 1995 when he successfully sued the police and learned he could weaponise his “big mouth” in the law.
Anwar qualified as a lawyer in 2000 and admitted his approach was at first more scattergun than stealth in the battleground of the court.
He said: “I used to take it all too personally. I was too angry, I was like a juggernaut coming through. I look back on earlier cases and think there are people I spoke publicly against, junior prosecutors I was rude to, who I would apologise to now.”
His high-profile cases have included representing the families of Fife man Sheku Bayoh, who died in police custody, and murdered waiter Surjit Singh Chhokar, which took two unsuccessful prosecutions, 18 years and the reform of the double jeopardy rule before a conviction was won.
Early in his career, he declared publicly that the justice system was a “gentlemen’s club” surrounded by “the vanity of wigs and gowns”.
It ensured hairpin bends in the road ahead, not least when he was tried and found not guilty of contempt of court in 2007 after being accused of disparaging the judge in the terrorism trial of Mohammed Atif Siddique, whom he later helped to clear.
He is now fighting for a posthumous appeal for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
His success has helped supplant headline writers’ labels of “terror lawyer”, “controversial lawyer” and “race lawyer” with “human rights lawyer”.
He has just won, for the second time, Solicitor of the Year, but modestly insists the description “top lawyer” will do.
But while the famous cases boost his profile, they are largely pro bono and his bread and butter are the ones not making the headlines.
He said: “I could be a lot more successful, and richer, if I didn’t fight the system.”
His friends, an eclectic bunch, say his stern image belies his joviality, ready laughter when ribbed and a heart worn on a designer sleeve.
He is hard to pigeonhole – a Muslim who drinks and goes clubbing, a feminist and defender of LGBT rights who receives death threats from Nazis branding him a “jihadi” and Islamist extremists who call him a traitor.
AAMER ANWAR