Also, wigs preserve Judges’ learned scalps from excessive scratching when befuddled by the equally learned but completely divergent and opposing interpretations of the same laws studied ad infinitum by the best and brightest in the business.

I new an old and delightful District Judge who wore his wig as a badge of elitism and only brightened up and was effusively welcoming when a brother-in-wig appeared in his court; Barristers stick together when faced by the common herd of un-bewigged legal sparrows!

Finally, I heard an old man once remarking that the judiciary wore wigs to protect their learned heads from the cudgels of dissatisfied litigants. I of course was duty-bound to correct him (he had heard about too many faction-fights from his grand-father’s grandfather)in stating that those elevated to the upper benches – whether by political ‘leg-up or over’ or strictly on the merits – were obliged to meet the conditions precedent for elevation by having a hard (impenetrable) head and a neck like Dunlop’s steel ball-bearings.

Did you notice how much like your friendly, jovial Father O’Flynn type of local Parish Priest, Ex-Mr Justice Barrington looked recently on T.V. Here was a man of the people; a man you could warm to! Never having met him in the Bar Library, or even at the Bar or in any bar, I feel that not a little of his obvious charm and great with is due to the act that discarded the wig and exposed his human head.

I say and demand that only females be allowed to wear wigs nowadays- whether on the Bench or on the tiles!

Barney