Sir Jeremy Lever KC KCMG

Sir Jeremy's death notice was in the DTel a couple of days ago. He was 92. He was regarded as extraordinarily intelligent and developed a huge following at the bar. But his hearing was deteriorating and so he could not become a judge. Eventually he came to live in All Souls and that is how I met him in 2012 since I was adjacent to him at High Table. He asked whether I thought the Guinness trial was a show trial of the Jews. Needless to add I did not know but found myself chewing over a matter that arose in the late eighties. If in recalling the details please forgive me if I make an error - it was a long time ago.

Guinness, now known as Diageo, had bid for Distillers and advisers to Guinness arranged for very rich stock market traders to borrow huge sums so that the traders would support Guinness's share price which was helpful to Guinness since the offer was in both cash and shares. Gerald Ronson decided instantaneously and the others, the Guinness chairman, Sir Jack Lyons and Tony Parnes were not slow either.. The terms were very favourable.

The whole thing blew up some months later and the trial judge split the eight defendants into the Guinness 4 and ditto the second lot of four.

The alleged breach of the law arose through the 1948 Companies Act which sought to protect creditors from reduced funds within the debtor that would have been caused by a buyback.

Michael Howard QC, himself a Jew, was at the DTI when the prosecutions were initiated.

The Guinness I 4 went off to gaol and, for some reason Guinness II was cancelled. It was then that some very senior silk advised that this was a profound miscarriage of justice since at no point had the creditors of Guinness ever been endangered - the share support operation was just a tactic to enable Guinness to win. (The other side, Argyll, were hard at it at the same time.)

After a few years the Guinness 4 were let out. And I had lunch at the Goring with Roland Shaw and Gerald Ronson who blew a thick rolling cloud of cigar smoke over Roland's and my smoked salmon. Neither I nor Roland thought the smoked salmon needed any further smoking.