Psychic hippy keeps up the veil

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Given the fuss over the courtroom burqa-wearing ladies, I thought it might be a good idea to interview the lawyer at the heart of the fuss, Colin Amery.

This turned out to be a mad idea. If anyone has managed to interview Amery I would like to hear how they did it, because I certainly failed.

On the way back from chez Amery, the photographer, Brett Phibbs, who has been doing this sort of stuff for a very long time and who has encountered everything, said: "I'd tell him to stand there and look there - and he'd do the opposite."

That sums Amery up pretty well.

I imagine that he has been doing, and saying, the opposite of the expected since he learned to speak.

His wife, Yvonne, does his research but her main job is to make valiant attempts to divert him from his natural course.

A sample exchange. Amery: "Do you want my comments about the Manukau court?"

Yvonne: "No, no. No, Colin."

Amery: "Okay. Keep going. We're doing the occult bit now."

The pair, who have been together for 14 years, have a good-natured relationship that involves much happy bickering.

On how they met: Yvonne says, "at poetry. I ran poetry readings".

Amery: "You're not telling that."

Yvonne: "We met each other first at the Gluepot. He was drunk."

Amery: "Oh, no. I was just having my wine. That's not drunk."

At one stage I tell them to stop fighting. They take absolutely no notice - they are having far too good a time.

By now things have disintegrated because a disgusted Amery has been called to court.

He grumbles: "It's a real nuisance. I might have known those idiots would do that. It's not fair to you, but then again, it's not fair to me. It's just so they can humiliate me."

He gets on the phone to some hapless person and says: "I'm in the middle of a very important interview." He isn't; he's on the phone.

Amery does his very important interviews from home, which is where he and Yvonne work. They can't afford an office, they say, and sometimes they can't afford the mortgage repayments either.

"We are a pretty humble outfit," says Amery. They seem not at all concerned.

They live and work and argue here in their plain little house by the estuary in Manukau with their three rabbits, an unseen dog, and eight cats, all former strays (one, Michael, has just had a sex change operation and, no, I couldn't bring myself to ask).

Yvonne keeps the incense burning and offers geranium oil for stress, and Amery settles on the couch - where "I do all my interviews" - covered in bright kilims.

There is a photograph of their now-dead guru. They are bound by a spiritual path which they prefer not to name because "it's private".

You don't really interview Amery alone because they are such a close pair. "See," says Yvonne, "we're vegetarians and we don't fit in with the in-crowd." I say, "What in-crowd?" and she says "Well, the legal sort of people. So we're on our own a lot."

You don't really interview Amery because his is a story crowded with characters at least as eccentric as the storyteller.

One story segues into another, seamlessly as far as Amery is concerned, leaving the listener limp with the effort of keeping up.

One seam which begins with how the couple became involved in protest movements - against the treatment of bears and "then we did Indonesia" - leads to a chance meeting on a train with the poet Michael O'Leary about which Amery wrote "this wonderful poem".

Yvonne, who is editing his memoirs (for which she deserves to be paid a huge amount) calls from the kitchen, "I think Michele might have got a bit lost by now".

Amery says, "She knew what to expect, I think."

Some time later - just after the telling of the story about how Amery was "a sort of spy" in Berlin "at the height of the Cold War" - Yvonne says "what's interesting Michele, is what you thought of Colin before you came".

I thought, and he agreed, that it is likely judges groan when Amery appears in their courtrooms. He'd "had a row" with a judge that morning, before we went to see him.

"If [insert any judge's name here] doesn't like me saying 'get on with it', I'm just doing my job."

And, with Yvonne safely out of hearing range, he can say: "I like going to Manukau [court], I hate the court. It's the worst run court in the Southern Hemisphere. Please quote me."

He also wanted me to give his tie a mention. "May I draw attention to the tie? Because you missed it. London School of Economics, 1958."

He gets on terrifically well with other lawyers too. He says he has about six lawyer mates but other than them, "when I have a major case, like the burqa case, the lot of them go mute".

He says he has been horrified to hear that "one of the big firms has been speaking well of me".

"Good God," I say, "you're Establishment now, Colin." He says "Yeah it's terrible. So we immediately went out and planted a bomb under their offices."

What I knew about Amery before I came included the "occult bit". The middle-class bloke from Essex got involved in magic while on the hippy trail which he went on in 1965 and has, he cheerfully owns, never departed from. I tell him I think he was born a hippy and he is delighted. "Good," he says, "you can put that in the article."

In previous incarnations he has been a psychic and a tarot card reader and he wrote a book about UFOs. He was also a butler in Mayfair, where he received unwelcome attention from the daughter of the house. Really, it would take a book, so you will have to wait for his.

One other thing I know: he is well known for ringing journalists, after they have written about him, and ticking them off. I tell him, "Now, Colin, no ringing me up and shouting and complaining." He says he wouldn't do any such thing: he'll just sue. Ha, ha.

I would say that he revels in controversy; he would say that he takes on issues. One of his issues was "free speech" and David Irving, the contentious historian. Amery was at school in Essex with Irving.

There is no delicate way forward and, anyway, being diplomatic with Amery would be like attempting to fell an elephant with a flower. So I blurt, "Does it bother you that some people probably think you're a bit of a nutjob?"

"Well, I've been accused of it. But I'm not."