Rumpole of the Bailey (TV Series)

Rumpole and Portia (1988)

Leo McKern: Horace Rumpole

Quotes 

• Hilda Rumpole : [as Rumpole enters their home]  Is that you, Rumpole?

  Horace Rumpole : [Sarcastically]  Good heavens, no, it's the Lord High Chancellor popped in to read the gas meter.

• Horace Rumpole : [to himself]  A fair judge, an upright judge - always a terrible danger to the defence!

• Horace Rumpole : [In an impassioned defence of Uncle Tom]  It's like great poetry - that's unnecessary. You can't eat it. It doesn't make you money. I suppose, there are some people, Ballard, who can get through life like you - without Wordsworth's sonnet "Upon Westminster Bridge". What we're discussing here is the quality of life. Uncle Tom adds an imaginative tone to what would otherwise be a dusty, dreary little clerks' office full of barristers, biscuits, and briefs.

• Samuel Ballard Q.C. : Uncle Tom and his golf balls are, in my considered opinion, a quite unnecessary health hazard. I'm asking him to vacate his rooms.

  Horace Rumpole : [horrified]  You're going to ask him to leave?

  Samuel Ballard Q.C. : Exactly that.

  Horace Rumpole : [standing up]  If Uncle Tom goes, I go.

  Samuel Ballard Q.C. : That would seem to make the departure of Uncle Tom even *more* desirable.