Charming and tireless entertainer
"There are lots of similarities between being a writer and a lawyer," John Mortimer once said. "To tell a story to a jury, to hold their attention, make them laugh, make them like you." But being a writer was much better than being a barrister: nobody could tell you what to say.
All his life Mortimer sought to entertain and to please, to make a funny and well-rounded anecdote of every incident, nearly all drawn more or less directly from his own life.
His best known play, A Voyage Round My Father, was about his life as a young lawyer and the relationship with his much-loved blind father which largely formed his own hedonistic and stoical attitude to life. Faced with any affliction, you just make the best of things. Life is for enjoying, come what may. It was a creed which lay behind both his libertarian commitment as a lawyer and the life-enhancing good humour of all his writing.
His best known character, Rumpole of the Bailey, was created originally created for a single play on TV in 1975 but was impersonated with such vim by Leo McKern that he took on a life of his own. Rumpole reappeared regularly for the rest of Mortimer's life, providing him with a dependable vehicle for commenting on whatever caught his attention - even, in his final two adventures, terrorism and Asbos.
But the best of Mortimer's writing is to be found in his autobiographies, Clinging to the Wreckage, Murderers And Other Friends, The Summer of a Dormouse and Where There's A Will. In these books, he is as charming as he was in social life.
For John Mortimer so craved the approval of an audience that he worked tirelessly to win it. And it was always impossible to be in his presence, whether on the page or in person, without feeling better, a smile forming and a laugh bubbling up.
