The Man With a Method

I met the Man With a Method when I was living and working in Marlborough, Wiltshire. He was what you might call 'an experienced debtor' - and he had a whole drawer to himself at the Uxbridge County Court to prove it.

The Method Man owed just about everything to just about everyone, but nobody was collecting the money they were owed - not even the utility companies (and they were all there in the drawer at Uxbridge!) - because part of Method Man's method was to lock every single creditor into expensive and long drawn out litigation by filing a Defence and Counterclaim to every single Summons and Writ he received.

I say 'expensive litigation', but the 'expensive' part of the phrase related only to his creditors. The Method Man acted for himself.

Fighting every creditor to the death - and trying to use Magna Carta to do it - was not, however, the most interesting part of Method Man's Method. His 'second string' was provoking a creditor's legal representative into hitting him within the confines of the Court, and then claiming damages for assault.

I have never really lost my temper since I beat a boy outside Ducks Toyshop in Marlborough High Street sometime in the early thirties and felt such a blind rage on the occasion that I frightened myself, but I very nearly lost it with the Method Man in the hall of the Slough County Court. And I very nearly hit him. And I couldn't be sure that I wouldn't hit him the next time we met. So I came up with what I thought was the perfect solution; I passed all the Method Man hearings over to my wife.

Method Man was a biggish sort of chap, and my wife is a smallish sort of woman. No chance, I thought, that this wretched man would be silly enough to try to goad my wife into hitting him and risk looking like a bully as well as a fool.

I was right, he wasn't prepared to take the chance. He just came up with a new Method.

Method Man followed my wife out of the Court and into the streets of Slough shouting 'Liar!' and 'Perjurer'. He pointed at her and yelled. He followed her and yelled. He screamed into her face. He tried to enlist the support of passers-by - who (perhaps best for themselves but unfortunately for my wife) weren't having any of it.

It isn't a long way from Slough County Court to the Railway Station - but it can seem like a very way if you're being followed by a raving lunatic. Halfway there, my wife had had enough. She fled into Marks and Spencer.

Marks and Spencer floorwalkers are very well trained. A small woman dressed by M&S is a customer; a big bloke shouting abuse is a problem. Method Man was removed, and so far as I know, never tried that method again - probably because it didn't work too well.

I heard afterwards from another firm of Solicitors that the Method Man had baited an Articled Clerk into belting him in the chops and was - of course - claiming damages for assault. I explained about 'the Method', and hopefully no harm was done, but I lost touch with the Method Man and his doings after that. The client threw in the towel.

If you are ever tempted to hit a debtor - remember the Method Man. It's cheaper and safer to walk away.