Rumpole of the Bailey (TV Series)

Rumpole and the Blind Tasting (1987)

Leo McKern: Horace Rumpole

Photos 

Quotes 

• Hilda Rumpole : Is that you Rumpole?

  Horace Rumpole : No, it's the man come to tune the harp.

• [Rumpole discusses the Timsons, whom he is defending, with Liz Probert] 

  Horace Rumpole : The Timsons would hate to be called working people. They are entirely middle-class villains. And they are very conservative too. They live according to strict monetarist principles and the free-market economy. And they're dead against the closed shop - they believe shops should be open all hours of the night... preferably with a jemmy!

• [talking about the "Chateau Fleet Street" wine that Rumpole is drinking] 

  Horace Rumpole : Of course, there is another reason why I drink Pomeroy's plonk. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you drink enough of this stuff, you stand a good chance of getting blotto.

  Claude Erskine-Brown : [horrified]  Horace! Good heavens! The purpose of wine is not to get you blotto.

  Horace Rumpole : You astonish me.

  Claude Erskine-Brown : It's to taste sunlight trapped in a glass. To remember some green slope in Burgundy, or a village by the Gironde.

  Horace Rumpole : I dare say there is a patch of barren soil in some corner of a foreign field where the Fleet Street grapes struggle for existence. Probably somewhere between a cow-shed and a pissoir.