Aamer Anwar, The Firm: Tin hats on, here comes new series

The Herald Scotland

11 hours ago

As The Herald's TV critic, I was unimpressed. My chief beef: its attempt to blend a serious look at real cases with a light-hearted take on office life, including slo-mo shots of women's shoes.
Produced by STV Studios Factual for BBC Scotland, a second series starts this week. I'd heard Anwar wasn't happy with my review of the first season, so I ask for an interview. After some to and fro - 'I had to think about it,' he says - here we are in his Blythswood Square offices.
His desk is full of photos, thank you cards, other bits and bobs, including a joke button that says 'BULL****'. At the back of the room are unopened boxes marked 'Hollywood Mirrors'.
He said yes to a second series because several of the cases he had been pursuing for years were coming to fruition, and he wanted to show the effect lengthy legal battles have on relatives.
'You get a 30-second soundbite on the news,' he says. 'Nobody gets to see the misery, the pain, the toll it takes on families.'
There was the chance, too, to counter some of the assumptions made about him. Just that morning, he says, someone had called him an 'ambulance chaser'.
He rejects the accusation, referencing the clients and cases he has worked on as he goes.
'You don't make money out of fighting for Margaret Caldwell for 10 years for free. The Sheku Bayoh family, seven years without funding. Surjit Singh Chhokhar, 18 years without funding.'
He says 70% of his work outside the courtroom is pro bono, and it's the firm's other work that pays the bills.
Anwar's own story is well known. Born in Liverpool, dad a bus driver, mother had various jobs, one sister. Went to Glasgow University where he discovered law, politics and campaigning. Took a battering from police, sued the cops and won. More cases followed, each more high-profile than the next.
We turn to the review. At first he brushes it off. 'Journalists write what they want about me, that's fair enough. It doesn't impact. Most people liked the series.'
But then he warms to his theme. And how.
'I did think it was … unfair. I was sitting in London when it came out, with my senior counsel, probably one of the finest advocates this country has ever produced, Dr Claire Mitchell, King's Counsel, the one who wrote the book about the witches just recently. She's questioned Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak. My counsel looked at her, then she flipped her shoes and went, 'I'm wearing bloody Louboutins. What, are we women not allowed to wear what we want to wear?' And for a woman to criticise young women in this office who like the way they dress …'
I try to jump in several times to challenge what he is saying, but without success. I'm getting everything bar the kitchen sink thrown at me and there is no way to stop the barrage. It is quite impressive in its way. I could probably leave the office, saunter round the block, and he would still be talking when I returned. What strikes me is how quickly he went from 0-90 on the outrage scale and back again as if nothing had happened.
He is 57 now, the hair more salt than pepper. He looks well. The suits help, and sessions at the gym. His three children, his partner, pals, exercise - these are what helped him through a breakdown a few years ago.
Work was the obvious culprit, but the root cause lay in his childhood. At home, dad 'ruled with a rod of iron'. School was no refuge because this was the 1970s and racism was rife. He felt powerless, angry, but what to do with all that rage? Like many of his generation he told himself to suck it up, just keep going, but then he could take no more.
Dad has now passed, his last years lost to dementia. 'The best thing I ever did was learn to forgive him because that gave me a sense of peace. The sad part is I never asked what happened to him. What made him the person he was.'
Mum is still adjusting to life without her husband of 58 years. She is a huge figure in her son's life, not least because she does his books. I ask if she gives him a discount.
'She gives me a row,' he laughs. If his mum hadn't taken over his personal finances it would be 'haywire'. Though it does mean he has to ask her for money. 'Everybody's like, how old are you?'
Our scrapping done, we're talking about the second series and footage of him as a young firebrand. If he could go back and have a word with that Aamer, what would he say?
'I would probably say shouting and screaming puts people off. You need to have evidence, you need to plan it more. If I'd carried on in that vein I probably would have ended up dead or in a jail cell. I had to channel that anger. That anger is still there and it comes back.'
Two women have appeared in the outer office.
'I probably should introduce you to Rebecca and Shelby, who are the girls in the Louboutins,' says Anwar.
Shelby says she had the review as her Twitter picture. Rebecca adds: 'It's just shoes isn't it? There are more important things.' We could have done with this two-woman UN peacekeeping force a while ago.
'I'm sorry if you were offended,' I say.
'It's okay,' says Rebecca. 'It's your job, it's my shoes. You can borrow them if you like.'
How we laugh. 'They don't take any s***,' says a beaming Anwar.
An example to us all, whatever our footwear.
The Firm, 9pm, June 17, BBC Scotland. All episodes on iPlayer the same day.