When I was a schoolboy, there was nothing I enjoyed more than exaggerating a mild sniffle, sloping off school and settling down to another riveting episode of the fictional daytime Granada TV trial, Crown Court. It taught me the thrill and jeopardy of a courtroom drama early. Let’s call it preparatory education for the trials I’ve known and obsessed over since, both fictional and real; an early afternoon apprenticeship in how to later negotiate Ally McBeal, This Life and The Good Wife.
It lent the trials of OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Archer, Martha Stewart, Ghislaine Maxwell and the scintillating possibility of a subpoena putting Prince Andrew’s non-existent sweat glands in the dock a warm, comforting familiarity. By the time I stepped into Southwark Crown Court ten years ago to serve a stint of jury duty, the dread silence of the court room felt as oddly recognisable as the lunchtime chaos of my local Nando’s.
