For the judge and the prosecution team in the phone-hacking trial, Charlie Brooks’s first Daily Telegraph racing column since he was acquitted will be hard to firm reading. Not surprisingly Brooks is smarting from Mr Justice Saunders’ decision not to award him the £600,000 he spent on legal fees. “When you win on a racecourse you get to take the prize money home … that is not the way they play in the Old Bailey.” And this: “Unlike a horse race, in the legal world it does not matter who wins or loses. They are always the winners.”
Gagging for it
After the prosecution lost its case, Brooks noted, “you have never heard whinging like it”. What happened? “The prosecutor shook like a tramp on a park bench and wailed to the Guardian that they had been under-resourced.” And there’s more invective pointed at the judge, or “Justice John ‘I crack the jokes’ Saunders” as Brooks refers to him. Andrew Edis, then a QC acting for the Crown Prosecution Service, and now a judge, comes in for special attention as Brooks complains how the prosecution had supported “his lordship’s daily gag”. “The prosecutor’s reptilian eyes welled up, reminiscent of an onion sous chef who had got at the gin.” Ouch. Ouch. Triple ouch. As for his number two? Mark Bryant-Heron. He is dismissed as his “obsequious sidekick, aptly named the Flapping Heron”. Wonder what he really thought?
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