I am interested in this business of Mick Jagger contesting the divorce petition taken against him by Ms Jerry Hall on the grounds that they were never married.
My interest arises because we here at celebrity lawyers Schwitt Kolonski Meyer have been to the forefront in recent years in providing ground-breaking new defence strategies for our distinguished clients.
Readers will recall in particular the development, at our Washington offices, of the renowned "Clinton defence", following crude allegations that the American President had engaged in a sexual relationship with the young intern, Ms Lewinsky. Our benchmark defence, setting new standards in creative law, clearly established that while Ms Lewinsky had a sexual relationship with Mr Clinton, he did not have one with her.
Here at Schwitt Kolonski Meyer, it is not simply a question of raising obscure so-called "points of law". We have made it our business to elevate legal argument above the mundane level where it normally exists, to an ethico-philosophical plane: witness our deliberations on the meaning of the word "is" in the Clinton defence already mentioned.
One of our most famous clients in recent times was the fabulously wealthy Indian poultry heiress Satay Gundjati, popularly known as Chicken Satay. She came to us in tears when accused by business rivals of laying poison on their chicken farms and thereby wiping out their stock.
In this case we took a particularly daring approach. We accepted that our client had indeed laid large quantities of a strychnine derivative on her accusers' lands. However, we brought in a distinguished pathologist, whose fee was relatively modest for such an eminent man, and who pointed out that, historically, strychnine has had many beneficial side-effects and is still used successfully to cure many ailments.
From this point we argued that our client had a long documented history of charitable work involving poultry, and that her intent in this instance had been - far from slaughtering poultry - to relieve the stress of her rivals' chickens: she did this at night because she did not want to draw attention to her own kind nature.
The fact that 3 1/2 million chickens died was a tragedy for which Satay would never forgive herself.
After minimal deliberation, the court threw out the case, and the judge himself, a very nice man who has often enjoyed the hospitality of Schwitt Kolonski Meyer at our guest villa in the Seychelles, demanded that the manufacturers of strychnine be pursued for costs.
In another glittering case, we defended the billionaire American philanthropist Harry Fluschendorf against scurrilous charges by a scullery-maid in his Long Island mansion that he had taken advantage of her on the back seat of his Rolls-Royce Corniche.
This time, we took the judge and jury out to the scene of the alleged crime on Long Island, where they spent a week as Mr Fluschendorf's guests along with a bevy of beauties (male and female) specially hired by ourselves. Then came our master-stroke: we lined up a dozen of our client's fleet of Rolls-Royces in the grounds of his home, and invited the scullery-maid to identify the car in which her defilement supposedly occurred.
The attractive young trollop's confusion was instantly apparent, as she was quite unable to distinguish between a Rolls-Royce Corniche, a Bentley Turbo Mulsanne and a vintage Silver Shadow. Back in court, my colleague Royston Meyer's witty concluding question, "And which vehicle would you prefer the alleged offence to have taken place in?" left the prosecuting counsel speechless, and set the seal on our success.
But enough of our firm's past glories. Right now we are pitching to replace the legal team representing the unfortunate Gen Pinochet, which we feel is taking an unimaginative approach by insisting that the distinguished military man has a right to immunity because of his status as a former head of state.
Our defence strategy would be that the general should not be extradited and tried in Spain because (a) Spain is connected to Portugal, and Chile isn't. Hardly fair, we say. (b) The fact that Chile and Spain share a language may prejudice Spaniards in his favour, and the general wants no special treatment. And (c) the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, which again tips the balance in favour of the beautiful people.
