MEET CAPTAIN LOOPHOLE
He’s the lawyer to the rich and famous who knows every trick in the book
CHRISTMAS is fast approaching, and it’s not just Santa Claus who will be kept busy over the festive period. For, as the days count down towards December 25th, the annual celebrity drink-drive season is already well underway. And that means that the phone never stops ringing for legal eagle CROMPTON ALLSORTS QC – better known to over-the-limit A-listers as Captain Loophole.
“I’ve lost count of the number of household names I’ve got off,” he told us from the swish office-cum-bedsit he keeps above a Burnley fish and chip shop. “And it’s not just on drink-driving charges neither. I’ve kept the stars out of chokey for all sorts of crimes, including burglary, armed robbery... and even murder.”
Allsorts – who amazingly has no formal legal training or any other qualifications whatsoever – is set to lift the lid on his sensational career as the stars’ go-to brief. He is currently looking for a publisher for his scarcely credible tell-all memoir Allsorts of Bother – My Life and Times as a Celebrity Lawyer.
Now, in a series of exclusive extracts from his book, Crompton tells all and names names. He told us: “My clients might not like me spilling the beans about their brushes with the law, but they’ll never dare sue me.”
“They know only too well that if we had our day in court, I’d wipe the fucking floor with them.”
COX’S ORANGE NICKIN’
It was a quiet afternoon and I was sitting in my chambers above the chip-shop watching the racing on Channel 4 when my phone rang. ‘I’m in a bit of a pickle, and I need your help,” said a familiar voice. It was TV astrologer PROFESSOR
BRIAN COX. “They’re going to do me for shoplifting,” he continued. “I don’t want to go to prison. A pretty scientist like me wouldn’t last five minutes in there.”
I told the mop-headed telly boffin to calm down and stop blubbing, and to come round to my chambers immediately. Shoplifting law is one of my specialities, as I have done time for it myself on a number of occasions, and I know every arcane twist and technicality of the legislation like the back of my hand.
Minutes later, a nervous Cox was perched on the end of my bed as I reviewed his case. Apparently, he’d gone into a sweetshop near Manchester University to buy a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Then, in a moment of madness that he now bitterly regretted, he had slipped the orange into his blouson pocket and left the premises without paying. Unfortunately, the shopkeeper had spotted what he was up to and had grabbed him on the street. Even worse, he had then called the filth on him.
My first question to Cox was one that could make or break his case: Had he said anything to the coppers who arrested him? An admission of guilt at this point would have made my job in court doubly difficult. He said he hadn’t; this was good news.
The legal definition of stealing is permanently depriving someone of their property. As long as Cox maintained that he had merely taken the Twix outside to examine it in a better light, and that he had had no intention of depriving the shopkeeper of his property by taking it back to his laboratory and eating it, he was in the clear.
Of course, they don’t call me Captain Loophole for nothing. If Cox had fessed up to his crime when the pigs nabbed him, it wouldn’t have been the end of the road; a number of legal channels would still have been open. For example, he could have stood up in court and told the jury under oath that the coppers had knocked him about to force a false confession out of him.
In the end, the case never went to trial. The prosecution knew only too well their case would fall to pieces under my forensic cross-examination. Professor Cox walked free, even though he and I both knew he was guilty as hell.
DANNY’S DYER STRAITS
Most of my legal casework involves defending the stars for relatively minor, victimless offences, such as speeding, drink-driving and having been a bit handsy in the seventies. But occasionally, a really serious crime arrives on my desk. And one that really sticks out in my mind is the time East Enders star DANNY DYER found himself on the wrong end of an Attempted Murder charge.
For a man looking at an easy ten years to life if he was found guilty, the Queen Vic landlord was surprisingly calm as he sat in my chambers and explained what had happened. Apparently, the window cleaner had just done the windows of his Essex home, when Dyer noticed he had missed some birdshit on the conservatory roof.The tradesman maintained that he had cleaned it properly and a bird must have shit on it during the last couple of minutes. Dyer pointed out it was dry, to which the window cleaner replied that bird shite dries in seconds, especially during hot weather.
Dyer wasn’t having that, and called him ‘a fucking melt’. An argument ensued that rapidly escalated into a physical altercation on the doorstep, during which the hardman Straight
heads actor pulled out a knife and stabbed the window cleaner in his side, leaving a deep wound that later required ten stitches.
The scuffers were called, Dyer had been arrested, and he was presently on bail after spending the night in the cells at Paddington Green. He was looking at a serious helping of porridge, but luckily he had come to the right place. I’d got Dot Cotton off a charge of assault with a deadly weapon a couple of years previously, and she’d given him my number.
As it happens, violent crime is one of my specialities. I’ve been done for
GBH more times than I care to remember, and I know all the loopholes back to front and inside out, and I knew I could get Dyer off on it. Believe it or not, for a legal eagle like me, this case was as easy as piss.
You see, the window cleaner had had a wet chamois leather in his big pocket. Had he pushed that over Dyer’s mouth and nose and held it there for a few minutes, the East-Enders actor would have suffocated. To all intents and purposes – and, most importantly, in the eyes of the law – that chamois was a deadly weapon. If the case came to trial, I would argue that, in pulling a knife on the window cleaner and stabbing the bastard up, my client had merely been acting in self defence.
When the filth saw the strength of my legal argument, they knew it would be pissing in the wind to pursue the case. But Danny had had a close call. He vowed that from now on, the only bars he would be finding himself behind would be the ones in the Queen Vic, and the only things he would be pulling on anyone in future would be pints of beer!
ROLLING IN THE DEEP TROUBLE
Benefit fraud costs this country millions of pounds every year, and the authorities are keen to bring those responsible to justice and make examples of them. And they must have thought they’d hooked themselves a big fish when pop singer ADELE was charged with fraudulently claiming Housing Benefit.
The Rolling in the Deep pop diva turned up at my chambers and explained to me the scam she had been
running. For the past four years, using a series of aliases, she had been claiming housing benefit on six council properties in the Greater Manchester area. Whilst living 200 miles away in a swanky Surrey mansion, she had been subletting these properties out to families of illegal immigrants, charging them exorbitant rents and threatening to dob them in if they didn’t keep up their payments.
I’ve been convicted of benefits fraud a few times myself over the years. So, as a poacher turned poacher’s lawyer, I knew from the outset that it was a particularly tricky area of legislation and it wasn’t going to be straightforward to get Adele off. After she left, I spent several hours poring over my legal textbooks. When I finally found the loophole I had been looking for, I realised it had been staring me in the face all along.
A few weeks later, I accompanied my client to Burnley Court. Even before proceedings began, I approached the bench and slapped the charge sheet down in front of the magistrates with a flourish. “May it please your honours…” I began, theatrically. “I would like to refer you to the Christian name entered into the box on the charge sheet, to wit ‘Adele’.”
“I would further draw your attention to the box on that same document for the defendant’s surname,” I continued. “You will see that it has been left blank.” There were audible gasps in the courtroom. The prosecution lawyer exchanged anxious looks with his clerk.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I put it to the you that the prosecution case is built on an incomplete, and therefore legally inadmissible, document.” I sat down, and there was a moment’s silence before the judge banged
his gavel. “Case dismissed,” he intoned. “Adele, you may leave this court without a stain on your character.”
That trial was a landmark case, and it was to prove a pivotal moment for countless other single-named stars. These days Sting, Bono, Lulu and Morrissey – to name but a few – are all running the exact same housing benefit scam as Adele was, and there is literally nothing the nash can do to stop them. Thanks to Captain Loophole, they know that any attempt to bring them to justice will simply be laughed out of court.
BLEAK OUTLOOK FOR CAROL
With her twinkly girl-next door image and butter-wouldn’tmelt manner, BBC Breakfast meteorologist CAROL KIRKWOOD is loved by viewers. But her national treasure reputation would be shot to fuck in an instant were she to be charged with breaking and entering a house, stealing £200 cash and a wedding ring, and shitting on the floor.
But this was exactly the litany of criminal charges that were facing Carol when she arrived in my chambers one morning. And the famously cheery weather girl was far from a ray of sunshine as she perched on the end of my bed, anxiously puffing on her vape like a cooling tower. Kirkwood explained that it was merely an opportunist crime. “I’m not a real criminal,” she insisted. “I just gave into temptation.”
At first glance, the case against her looked strong. Neighbours had called police after seeing Kirkwood acting suspiciously in the back lane, and officers had apprehended her in the house – with the stolen property in her pockets – while she was pulling up her scads after curling one off on the hall rug. On the face of it, it was an open and shut case. Any lawyer would have advised her to plead guilty and throw herself on the mercy of the court.
But I’m not just any lawyer. Over the years, I have done time for burglary more times than I’ve had hot dinners, so I know every sneaky backdoor trick in the legal book … and a few more besides. “Carol,” I reassured her. “We’re going to fight this case, and what’s more, we’re going to win, and here’s how.”
Firstly, as I explained, she had had her collar felt before she had a chance to leave the house with the swag; technically, the ring and the cash had not been stolen, simply moved. As for the shite on the carpet, I instructed her to testify that she had been intending to wipe it up, but the tit heads had rocked up before she’d had a chance to find a cloth.
These were all good legal arguments; probably enough on their own to sway any judge or jury Carol’s way. But my coup de grace was the charge of breaking and entering. Carol had merely reached through an open porch window and flicked the latch on the door. In the circumstances, as she had caused no damage, the most she could be charged with was trespassing on private property – a minor civil misdemeanour rather than a criminal offence.
Needless to say, when the trial day arrived and the prosecution barrister got a gander at the legal elegance of the defence case I was about to present, he quickly decided to drop all charges.
When Carol first came to see me, it had looked like a decidedly gloomy forecast for the nine-times Weather Presenter of the Year. Now, thanks to Captain Loophole’s timely intervention, she had nothing but sunny spells ahead.
NEXT WEEK: Britpop star Jarvis Cocker is caught on CCTV wielding a sawnoff shotgun during an armed raid on a Sheffield sub-post office, during which a have-a-go hero member of the public is shot in the foot. Crompton has to call of his legal nous to stop the Pulp frontman going down for life.