YOU didn't want to get on the wrong side of Lord Stott, particularly if you, too, were in the legal profession. Lord S, who retired in 1984 aged 75, has published the third instalment of his diaries and remains as caustic as a Brillo pad dried beneath the desert sun.
The former Lord Advocate for Scotland has kept a diary since 1925. The publishers' blurb calls his latest delicious diatribes ''an invaluable social record dealing with aspects of daily life and legal affairs not covered in the history books''.
That much is certainly true. Listen to this about the new replacement for Lord President Cooper: ''I had always thought that Clyde's appointment would be a serious change for the worse but I had not realised just how bad it was going to be.''
He didn't have much time for Migdale, either. ''Migdale,'' he records, ''had had a night to prepare (his charge) and read it out from several pages of foolscap, but it was just rubbish: incoherent, rambling, and often meaningless.'' Dear, oh dear. And he wasn't finished with the poor bloke yet. ''Jack Hunter said that on telling his wife he had a number of cases before Migdale her reply had been: 'Many a Migdale makes a muddle'.''
He is eloquent to a fault about Prime Minister Anthony Eden's speech defending his invasion of Egypt. ''He spoke well, and it was terrifying to see how some judicious selection, with barely perceptible distortion of the facts, could turn an act of lunacy into the semblance of something completely reasonable.''
Gordon Stott, whose diaries also reveal an eye for a good gown, was never caught napping. Unlike some. ''Carmont,'' he records, ''was asleep most of the afternoon.'' QC's Diary is published by the Mercat Press at #15.99. Not for those of a nervous disposition.
HATS off to Brooklyn, the pleasant New York suburb which recently went a whole week without a murder. Indeed, murder has been a declining hobby in New York City throughout the 1990s. The important question is, if this trend continues across America, how is it going to affect our television viewing? ''Tonight on Hill Street Blues, Captain Furillo escorts a potentially dangerous old lady across 4th Street . . . on his own.'' ''Cagney & Lacey are back and they mean business: Make My Day, Jaywalker begins at 8.30. And finishes at 8.35.''
At least New Yoik's finest don't have to deal with the dreaded biscuit fiends of old Amsterdam. Two Middle Eastern men were recently arrested there for robbing tourists after drugging them with spiked Digestives. What a preposterous idea. I mean, would you accept a Hobnob from a total stranger?
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