“The Worsfield Show is one of the more pleasant occasions associated with that unattractive city.  It takes place on Worsfield Heath, not far from the by-pass. (It can be said in favour of Worsfield that it is surrounded, and to some extent immunized, by the countryside.)  It is true that the factory chimneys, now almost hiding the Cathedral tower, are visible from the site, but once a year they are fronted by sideshows, show-rings, horseboxes and sheep pens.  The beer tents are open all day and there farmers mix with commuters.  Girls from Tesco’s and the biscuit factory mingle with pigmen, stockmen, bingo-callers, fortune-tellers and dedicated showjumpers.  Huge quantities of Simcox ale are drunk and great rivers of bubbling urine course down the troughs in the flapping lavatory tents and manure the common.  Children in jodhpurs and hacking-jackets are mounted on midget ponies and forced over jumps by relentless parents greedy for rosettes.  Worsfield Show is a place where you can still bowl for a pig, buy a horse or a pound of homemade marmalade, and watch a calm girl in a fringed cowboy suit being picked out by quivering knives hurled by her nervous chain smoking-husband” from Paradise Postponed, John Mortimer, Penguin London 1986 (p 184)

John Mortimer hold a special place in western literature and television.  He continually championed the poor, the disadvantage, the mischievous, and the drinking of rough red wine.  There is a lot to like about this man.  Oh, he died in 2009.

And this obituary posted in the blog “Wha Happen?” by Robert Boyd on 17 January 2009

One of my favorite writers, John Mortimer, died Friday at the age of 85. He was best known for his short stories about Rumpole, a criminal defense lawyer working in the Old Bailey. As far as I know, it is the only long-running series about criminal defense, and certainly the one most sympathetic to the trade. Mortimer saw defense lawyers as essential guardians of the rights of all citizens, and as persons who operated in the face of skepticism and hostility from the police, prosecutors, judges, and much of the public. (John Grisham approaches defense lawyers similarly, but his writing has never appealed to me that much.) 

It seems to me that in these days of Law & Order, we worship prosecutors too much. We’ve seen the tragedy of this attitude in Texas and in Houston in particular. I would like pop culture to re-elevate the defense lawyer, as it did in the days of Anatomy of a Murder and To Kill a Mockingbird. And if this could happen with the same wit that Mortimer brought to the Rumpole stories, all the better.

For another more detailed obit try this from the New York Times

Here is John Mortimer (left) and Leo McKern who played Horace Rumpole in Rumpole of the Bailey

Tomorrow we look at another satirist, Tom Sharpe