“Can you arrange some tea, Coop?”

I really like Judge John Deed, yet I have to acknowledge there are flaws. It’s deliberately political. It’s riddled with legal inaccuracies. It pre-supposes that only three lawyers ever operate in the High Court.

It has also some of the most ridiculous in-breeding going on; there is no way in the real legal world that any judge would be allowed by the judiciary (or his conscience) to hear cases where his ex-wife (who is now married to his boss, the Home Secretary, natch) is the prosecution counsel, his on-off squeeze is regularly acting for the defence, and his own daughter also frequently appears before him – often as junior counsel to either his ex-wife or on-off squeeze. Everything about the programme is ludicrous.

So why do I watch it? Well, I’m a sucker for courtroom drama, irrespective of accuracy or credibility (the repeats of Crown Court on Legal TV are quite something, even when you’re 33 instead of merely three years of age). And there’s some kind of mediocre sport in guessing with which woman – other than or instead of the on-off squeeze – the judge will have done some illicit horizontal jogging before the 60 minutes are up. But most of all, it’s simply because Jenny Seagrove is in it. And yes, she is the on-off squeeze who gets the judge to check her briefs, etc etc …