Ken Dodd's tax case

When the comedian Ken Dodd was charged with tax fraud in 1989 he vetted a string of barristers before eventually telling his solicitor that he wanted to see George Carman. This proved to be a wise move. The case bore many of the hallmarks of a typical Carman performance: a famous defendant, seemingly incontrovertible evidence and a sensational acquittal. The result owed much to Carman's deftness at arguing that comic genius and careful accounting were strangers. He encapsulated the hypothesis in a phrase that he rightly judged would strike a chord with the jury: "Some accountants are comedians," he said. Then, after a pause: "But comedians are never accountants."