Legal antihero Nick Freeman can also advise on dressing to avoid rape
How is it possible that in almost eight years Lost in Showbiz has never highlighted the work of celebrity motoring lawyer Mr Loophole? It seems unfathomable that, despite the sheer volume of nonsense churned out, not once has LiS stopped its metaphorical tour bus outside the well-appointed Cheshire home of Nick Freeman.
In my defence, for a long time I didn't realise Nick was real, assuming he was just created by the Random Late Capitalist Character Generator, like "Trudie Styler" or the lady with the NHS boobs who organised a Thatcher death party. (If you're reading this, Romany Blythe, you're my best new sublebrity.)
But it seems that Nick actually exists. Beside a highly-coiffed photo, his website trumpets his work for "a string of high-profile celebrities", who have included Alex Ferguson (the Manchester United manager had diarrhoea), Caprice (cystitis), Jeremy Clarkson (nothing wrong "down there", but they couldn't prove it was him driving), Jimmy Carr, a tanked-up Steve McFadden and endless footballers. He has trademarked the name "Mr Loophole".
Only this week, Nick defended Girls Aloud's Sarah Harding on charges of using a mobile phone at the wheel and failing to stop for an officer. He explained that "the Range Rover bluetooth system works erratically" – not a dry sickbag in the house for that one, I imagine – and presented an argument the judge later summarised as amounting to Harding not being a mere "normal person".
"Won the battle, lost the war", was Nick's self-lacerating tweet on the verdict, much as if he had mishandled the Tet offensive, as opposed to got only half the driving charges against a pop star dropped.
But then, a celebrity in motoring distress is like the bat signal to him. Do imagine Nick deep in his underground Manchester base, receiving word that someone's black Range-Rover – the vehicular calling card of the arseoisie – has been snapped doing 117mph while they are half-cut or on the phone to their agent or something equally post-justice. "I needed to protect my reputation," he said of copyrighting Mr Loophole, "and the public."
Mm. It's a tough call, but I think my favourite thing about Nick is how he cloaks his work in the mantle of some perverse moral code, rather like Max Clifford. Much of what Max does, you will recall, is for a higher purpose. His 90s Tory sleaze exposes were a self-styled "personal vendetta" against that government's NHS policies. Nick appears to share much of the Clifford burden (a Yewtree call-up obviously excepted). Which is to say, many people misunderstand him. Nick insists you see him as some kind of legal antihero, dedicated to exposing flaws in police evidence gathering. "I'm highlighting the potholes," he says. "I'm not the man with the tarmac."
Perhaps it would help to consider him in the mould of troubled crusaders like The Punisher. And in many ways, Nick's is the classic superhero narrative. Aged 12, I imagine, he saw his parents brutally assaulted by a parking ticket, and the gut-twisting horror of that injustice made him what he is today. Sometimes, he still wakes up screaming, the look on their faces as they shrieked, "Why don't these council parasites get a proper job?" as fresh as it was that fateful day all those years ago. Justice doesn't yet have a new face, but it's certainly got a load of expensive hair products.
If I do have a cavil, it's the use of the "Mr" honorific in his superhero name. Lost in Showbiz would have preferred it if he'd gone with the definite article instead. "The Loophole" is much better than "Mr Loophole". Mr Loophole, in fact, may well qualify for the title of Worst Superhero Ever – outstripping even uber-nebbishes like Mintberry Crunch.
Yet to concentrate on a single aspect of Nick's work is to misunderestimate this renaissance man. After all, he is a much underrated thinker, and until last year enjoyed a position as columnist for the Manchester Evening News.
"I suspect there is a strong link between our ever growing obesity problem and litter," runs one Paul Krugman-esque outing. "I have yet to find an avocado and chicken sandwich container while out on a morning run or a salad niçoise for that matter."
But it is in the field of sexual politics that Nick is at his most surpassingly incisive. When he rings his energy provider twice, conflicting advice from a female call centre worker and a male one leads him to one conclusion: "Dare I suggest that women are frequently unreasonable when in positions of power and dealing with men?"
On rape, he warns that women need to "take responsibility" for how they dress. "As a red-blooded alpha male," Nick explains, "let me state unequivocally that I believe how a woman dresses (and behaves in that dress) tells a man what's on her mind." That said, he informs readers that his defence work has brought him into contact with "cases where those who have been dressed in a perfectly conventional way were still victims of this heinous crime." Key word: still. The way a woman dresses, Nick concludes, "can victimise men".
Unsurprisingly, it is to this kind of elastic mind that some celebrities on drink-driving or speeding raps seem instinctively drawn. And, happily, the medium of Twitter now allows Nick to speak that mind whenever he pleases.
"The day women got equal rights was the day they lost all their rights," runs a slightly opaque recent tweet. In another, I'm A Celebrity contestant Helen Flanagan was deemed to be "nice but very dim – setting the female cause back decades". I am not sure if Nick does the full set of isms, and a black person behaving irksomely on some reality TV show or other would be joshingly branded as setting the civil-rights cause back decades. I imagine he'll be getting in touch, though, so perhaps he could let me know then.
In the meantime, you might be wondering why we can't send such a treasure on permanent loan abroad. It's a thought that seems to have occurred to Nick, who imagines himself a fit with what he imagines to be America. "I would be a celebrity over there," he chuckled to an interviewer last year. "It's a different mental ethos. When you have a nice car in this country, people don't really like it. In America, they're like: 'Wow, how did you do that? Great, fantastic.'
"But," speculates Nick in a line somehow redolent of Basil Fawlty's inquiry as to whether there are palm trees in California, "I'm sure there are good lawyers in America."
Well, as Basil's guest replied: "They say Burt Lancaster had one, but I don't believe them."
