Peter Cook’s comic creation EL Wisty once remarked: “I could have been a judge, but I never had the Latin; I never had the Latin for the judgin’. So I’d had it, as far as being a judge was concerned.” Cook fulfilled his judicial ambitions with Here Comes the Judge, a cruel parody of the former Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe’s trial in which High Court judges were caricatured as privileged, prejudiced and patronising. At that time, it was not entirely wide of the mark.
As Cook’s full-bottom wig hit the stage in 1979, Margaret Thatcher became the first woman Prime Minister, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss became the third woman High Court judge and the Judicial Studies Board (JSB) opened for business.
