And which opera first performed at the Viennese Statsoper in 1846

And which opera, first performed at the Viennese Statsoper in 1846…?” (But I think we can probably discount any suggestion of answer-rigging on University Challenge, given the panellists’ startling level of ignorance about, say, the date of the Abdication.)Since it seems to be the fashion to blow the whistle on rule-bending in radio shows, here goes: I was told some of the questions when I appeared on Nigel Rees’s Quote Unquote programme a few years ago. We’ve only just dried our tears after learning that guests on the Channel 4 quiz show Countdown are prompted towards the right combination of letters by a studio hand whispering answers to them through an earpiece.How many more ghastly revelations will we have to endure? Must we envisage the prospect of Jeremy Paxman circulating the BBC2 green room, muttering “Who invented hieroglyphics? Rameses II Don’t forget. We’re still reeling from the news, last year, that the droll exchanges between guests on Have I Got News For You? are all rehearsed for months before being uttered. In Parsons’ view, you can’t beat a rehearsal for making a spontaneous monologue go with a swing.Well, honestly. Such old hands as Clement Freud don’t mind having a subject sprung on them; Paul Merton, by contrast, likes to know what’s coming up, so he can have one of his stratospheric riffs all ready to go. Shockingly, it seems that an hour before the recording starts, they’re given a list of topics to be covered in the show, and thus have plenty of time to rehearse their “ad-libbed” contributions.

Parsons points out that “pre-knowledge” of the subjects is an option that more confident guests could decline, if they wished to do so.
“We discovered, right at the beginning, that if the subject was completely unseen, the guests were umming and erring within a few seconds,” he says. Nicholas Parsons, for 32 years the show’s oleaginous chairman, has spilt the beans that his guests – including such wits as Paul Merton, Stephen Fry and Kit Hesketh-Harvey – aren’t wholly extemporising when they hold forth on “Deckchairs” or “Maiden Aunts” or “My First Suit” without hesitation, deviation or repetition. With a thrill of horror, the nation has learnt that the guests on Radio 4’s Just a Minute may not be as startlingly fluent as they seem. The many Cooke references are either the authors of works on physics or fungi – or a 1930 study, Prepubescent Syphilis.. But the CD-Rom solves one question: who is quoted more, Cooke or Crisp? Neither figures. All of which is to say that the OED on CD-Rom has its uses but none of the tactile pleasure of the printed volumes: absent from both is the recurrent offer of tactile as a quality in lonely-hearts columns.

THERE’S NO muddling those two grey-haired, 90-year-old, finely spoken English gentlemen who have made Manhattan their home and regularly deliver commentary upon its manifold delights and absurdities: Alistair Cooke has an apartment on Fifth Avenue by the Park while Quentin Crisp makes do with a dusty room in Greenwich Village. The decision was not, as the applicant contended, confined to wardship proceedings, but clearly extended to other chambers hearings.. It was authority for the proposition that in family matters in chambers the judge had a discretion whether or not to allow a McKenzie friend to assist a litigant in person. If the application of the litigant in person was refused, it was he, and not the McKenzie friend, who had the right to challenge that refusal.The fact that a McKenzie friend called himself a professional McKenzie friend and acted for reward did not create a right over and above his right as a member of the public, and a member of the public had no right to be present in chambers proceedings.The decision in G (A Minor) was particularly in point with regard to the applicant’s case. He had a right as a member of the public to be present in open court and nothing more.

The right to assistance was that of the litigant in person who asked the court for such assistance to be given. If he had the right for which he contended, he would have locus standi.The status of a McKenzie friend had first been recognised in Collier v Hicks [1831] 2 B & Ad 663, in which it was said that:Any person, whether he be a professional man or not, may attend as a friend of either party, may take notes, may quietly make suggestions, and give advice; but no one can demand to take part in the proceedings as an advocate, contrary to the regulations of the court as settled by the discretion of the justices.In G (A Minor) (unreported, 10 July 1991), in which the judge had refused to allow a McKenzie friend to assist in wardship proceedings held in chambers, the Court of Appeal held that, although there were no doubt many cases in which a judge would find it proper to exercise his discretion in favour of allowing a McKenzie friend to be in chambers, it was a matter for the judge to have control over whom he permitted to remain.The judgment in R v Leicester City Justices, ex p Barrow [1991] QB 260 conclusively refuted the applicant’s case that he had a “right” to act as a McKenzie friend. A judge had no power to exclude him, in the absence of misconduct.The applicant appeared in person; Rabinder Singh (Treasury Solicitor) for the respondent.Lord Justice Otton said that at the start of the appeal hearing a question had arisen as to whether the applicant had any locus standi to make the application. He contended that a McKenzie friend was a well-defined entity with a well- recognised status and rights, and that he had the same right to appear in court as a barrister or solicitor. The judge who was due to hear the application indicated that he would not permit the applicant to do so.The applicant sought judicial review of that decision, asserting that he had a sufficient interest in litigation as a professional McKenzie friend providing a regular service to appear in open court and in chambers when required to do so by litigants in person. On a number of previous occasions he had acted as a McKenzie friend to litigants and had sought the right to represent litigants who were otherwise without representation.On 9 December 1997 he sought to assist a friend, Mr Greenwood, on an ex parte application in chambers at Bow County Court.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application of Dr Michael Pelling for judicial review of the decision of a judge in the Bow County Court to refuse to allow him to act as a McKenzie friend in family proceedings heard in chambers.
The applicant was an experienced participant in family disputes, often, but not invariably, as a campaigner for the rights of fathers and their children. Enlightened self-interest has a fine pedigree in the resolution of anomalies.Peter Warburton is the author of `Debt and Delusion’ (Penguin, pounds 18.99). A JUDGE had a discretion whether to allow a McKenzie friend to assist a litigant in person in family proceedings heard in chambers. Their eagerness to liquidate substantial quantities of financial market investments and to repay debt would go a long way to re-balancing the system without any change in economic policy or financial regulation. The one trend feeds off the other.Excessive debt growth – a form of debt addiction, if you like, is destructive in itself. Indeed, stripped of its socially unacceptable association with inflation, debt growth is even more dangerous.What can be done? Most encouraging would be if individual savers and investors woke up one day and realised how much financial risk has been imputed to them by an over-extended credit system.