Following the popularity of the video of Slaughter and May in 1981, we have continued our trawl of YouTube and unearthed a 1985 episode of ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ starring Lord Denning and Noddy — which thankfully has a happy ending
The Jimmy Savile saga has had more twists, turns and shocking revelations than a whole year of EastEnders and Coronation Street episodes combined — but this video unearthed by Legal Cheek from the depths of YouTube is one of the more curious adjuncts to the tale.
Back in 1985, 13-year-old Lisa Birkbeck from Walesby in Nottinghamshire, wrote to Savile’s “Jim’ll Fix It” programme on the BBC. Young Lisa wanted to be a barrister when she left school and she asked the mega-star DJ/telly presenter to fix it so she could appear as one at the Old Bailey for a day.
Savile duly obliged — but the astonishing part of the story is that Lisa Birkbeck became Lisa Hardy of No1 High Pavement Chambers in Nottingham. Hardy transferred to the bar after 11 years as a solicitor practising at the Crown Prosecution Service, where she specialised in serious crime. Ironically, part of her work involved dealing with serious historic and current sexual offences.
Over the last few years, Savile has been labelled as one of the most prolific and heinous paedophiles and sex offenders in British history — despite having never been charged and now incapable of being brought to court owing to being very much dead.
While at the time, the episode featuring the young Hardy/Birkbeck would have been totally innocuous, in retrospect it is intriguing for a number of reasons. Not least, Savile’s ability to persuade the great and the good to get on board with his projects.
The mock trial at the Bailey — in which Birkbeck appears as defence counsel for Noddy from Toytown, who stands accused of reckless driving — is presided over by no lesser personage than Lord Denning.
At that stage, the man who was considered one of the greatest legal minds of the 20th century was 86 and only three years retired from a 20-year stint as Master of the Rolls.
The teenage Birkbeck handles herself for the most part with utter aplomb before the titanic judge. She argues confidently in mitigation for her client, submitting that Noddy was in a new relationship with Tessie Bear, who had, said the budding barrister, provided a stabilising influence on the self-employed taxi driver.
Birkbeck was briefly caught on the back foot when Denning suggested her client had a long history of “being cheeky”, but she steadied herself and carried on to obtain what her client should have considered to be a fair result.
Qualified barrister Hardy was called at Lincoln’s Inn three years ago after having first qualified as a solicitor in 1996. When contacted by Legal Cheek for this article she declined to comment.
The full video can be seen below:
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No computers, smoking in the office and a comment about a female trainee’s ‘backside’: this video of Slaughter and May from 1981 is incredible [Legal Cheek]