Let's start with something very funny, but very true, too, about judging

Peter Cook: “The judge”

Having provided details of my book (as below), I am now free to start.
     To kick things off in a jolly mood, I can do no better than to refer readers to what is in my view the funniest sketch ever performed about judging. The star is the late, great Peter Cook, and the subject matter the Jeremy Thorpe trial, in 1979, which featured a ludicrously biased summing up (or charge to the jury) by the judge, Mr Justice Cantley. 
     Mr Thorpe, who was then Leader of the Liberal Party, was on trial for attempted murder and conspiracy to murder, allegedly in order to cover up a homosexual affair. But he was an important member of the British establishment and the judge appeared to want to protect him. He described one of the witnesses for the prosecution, for example, as “a crook, an accomplished liar [and] a fraud”. This is, of course, not the way blindfold justice is supposed to operate, and Peter Cook’s sketch builds upon this promising foundation for satire. 
     A summary of the background can be found on Wikipedia, and readers interested in a fuller account of the trial, which caused a scandal at the time, can read it in Auberon Waugh’s book The Last Word: an Eye-Witness Account of the Thorpe Trial.