Leo McKern: Horace Rumpole

Quotes 

• Horace Rumpole : [entering Pomeroy's and seeing a pensive Erskine-Brown]  Oh, what can ail thee, Erskine-Brown, alone and palely loitering?

  Claude Erskine-Brown : [depressed]  Mmm. It's my practice, Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : [clearly enjoying the pun]  Oh, still practicing? I thought you might have got the hang of it by now.

• Horace Rumpole : [giving back the claret when he realizes he can get champagne]  Jack, this horse was unfit for work.

• Horace Rumpole : I never plead guilty!

• Horace Rumpole : A barrister, my dear sir, is a taxi plying for hire. That is the fine tradition of our trade.

• Horace Rumpole : [startled at seeing an empty breakfast table]  There are no bacon and eggs, Hilda!

  Hilda Rumpole : Claude doesn't like a cooked breakfast, Rumpole, but there's plenty of muesli. I got it for him specially.

  Horace Rumpole : [looking in horror at the jar of muesli]  What's that? Sawdust and bird droppings?

• Morry Machin : Have you been drinking at all this evening?

  Horace Rumpole : [slightly tipsy]  Of course, I've been drinking at all. You don't think I come out with these blinding flashes of deduction when I'm completely sober, do you?

• [Morry Machin refuses to print a clarification about the photograph of Claude Erskine-Brown outside the sex club] 

  Horace Rumpole : Mr Machin, I told you that it was a legal rule that a British barrister is in duty bound to take on any client, however repellent.

  Morry Machin : I do remember you saying something of the sort.

  Horace Rumpole : But you are stretching my duty to the furthest limit of human endurance.

• [Rumpole is cross-examining Amelia Nettleship in court] 

  Horace Rumpole : May I read a short extract from a so-called historical novel entitled "Lord Stingo's Fancy".

  Judge Teasdale : Ah yes, isn't that the one that ends happily?

  Horace Rumpole : Happily *all* Miss Nettleship's novels end, my Lord - eventually.

  [laughter from the jury] 

• [Claude Erskine-Brown and Ted Sleaman meet for the first time in years] 

  Claude Erskine-Brown : "Slimey" Sleaman?

  Ted Sleaman : "Collywobbles" Erskine-Brown.

  Claude Erskine-Brown : We were at school together.

  Horace Rumpole : [drily]  Yes, obviously.

  Ted Sleaman : Look, would you care to join my editor. Glass of Bolly.

  Claude Erskine-Brown : What?

  Ted Sleaman : Bollinger.

  Claude Erskine-Brown : Thank you Slimey, I'd love to.

  Ted Sleaman : Well come on, then.

  Claude Erskine-Brown : [to Erskine-Brown]  Golly, Colly. Bolly.

• [Rumpole is reading an extract from one of Amelia Nettleship's historical novels] 

  Horace Rumpole : "Sophia had first set eyes on Lord Stingo when she was a dewy eighteen-year-old and he had clattered up to her father's castle, exhausted from the Battle of Nazeby. Now at the ball to triumphantly celebrate the gorgeous enthroning coronation of the Merry Monarch, King Charles II, they were to meet again. Sophia was now in her twenties. But in ways too numerous to completely describe, still an unspoiled girl at heart." You call that a historical novel?

  Amelia Nettleship : Certainly.

  Horace Rumpole : Haven't you forgotten something?

  Amelia Nettleship : I don't think so. What?

  Horace Rumpole : Oliver Cromwell.

  Amelia Nettleship : I really don't know what you mean.

  Horace Rumpole : Well clearly, if this girl... this Sophia... how do you describe her?

  Judge Teasdale : "Dewy", Mr Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : Ah yes, "dewy". I'm grateful to your Lordship. I had forgotten the full horror of the passage. If this dew-bespattered Sophie was eighteen at the time of the Battle of Naseby, in the reign of King Charles I, she would have been thirty-three in the coronation year of King Charles II, because Oliver Cromwell came in between.

  Amelia Nettleship : Ah, I am an artist, Mr Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : What sort of an artist?

  Judge Teasdale : I think Miss Nettleship means "an artist in words".

  Horace Rumpole : Ah, then your Lordship is undoubtedly interested that in the passage I have just read out, there were two split infinitives and a tautology.

  Judge Teasdale : A what, Mr Rumpole?

  Horace Rumpole : Two words having the same meaning, my Lord. As in "enthroning coronation". Tautology. T-A-U...

  Judge Teasdale : I can spell, Mr Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : Then your Lordship has the advantage of the witness. She spells "Naseby" with a Z. These questions go straight to the heart of this witness's credibility. I have to suggest, Miss Nettleship, that as an historical novellist, you are a complete fake. You have no respect for history and very little for the English language.

  Amelia Nettleship : I try to tell a story, Mr Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : And your evidence to this court has been, to use my Lord's vivid expression, "a rattling good yarn".

• Morry Machin : [patronisingly]  Have you been drinking at all this evening?

  Horace Rumpole : Of *course* I've been drinking. You don't think I come out with these blinding flashes of deduction when I'm completely sober, do you?