Gilded Goldsmith - but very heavily tarnished ....

BBC Radio 4 Profile (listen here - available for 7 days) has Guradian columnist and legal writer Marcel Berlins with his beautifully clear, sharp yet mellifluous voice , profiling the hopeless, incompetent, and sinister Attorney General Lord Goldsmith - who amazingly the listener is told, could, before he embarked on his political career, earn £1 Mn a year at the commercial bar.

What will linger in the mind after listening to this excellent, brief introduction , apart from the evident lies he told over the illegal Iraq invasion, and the lies he told the House of Lords over suspending action over BAe's bribery in Saudi Arabia ,was Francis Wheen's story about how this very bright, Jewish solicitors sone from Liverpool, who followed John Lennon to attend Quarry Bank School, ever got embroiled in New Labour politics.

Apparently Tony Blair's , sxhoolboy friend, one time bedmate and flatmate, Charlie Falconer (of Fountain Court Chambers as is Goldsmith ) and Helena Kennedy of Doughty St. Chambers in 1997 organised a £100 plate dinner at the swish, expensive River Cafe, for Labour supporting lawyers. Apparently Goldsmith (then Chairman of the Bar) made such a fuss and threw such a tantrum on being asked for £100 that he demanded to be sat next to Tony Blair. Which he was.

Eventually he was, and spent the evening schmoozing with Tony (whom he had never previously met ) - 2 years later he was ennobled and made (the unelected) Attorney General.

Helena (pic) was transformed into Baroness (Lady) Kennedy of The Shaws and Charlie into Lord Falconer of Thoroton and of the Millenium Dome in double quick time. He was also transformed into the Lord Chancellor (via Solicitor General) and warmed his ample bottom on the Woolsack - which as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor he does no longer... but his arse and jowls have not ceased their astonishing growth.

The picture is by Feliks Topolski of Fountain Court - the spot in Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit where John Westlock declared his love for Ruth Pinch. Chapter 45

" Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of Fountain Court for the smoky shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is a question for gardeners, and those who are learned in the loves of plants. But, that it was a good thing for that same paved yard to have such a delicate little figure flitting through it; that it passed like a smile from the grimy old houses, and the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker, sterner than before ....."