Chortle Chortle, Scribble Scribble: Inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s Last Court Reporters
October 18, 2024 at 03:32AMA fascinating look at the courts of the Old Bailey, and the man who reports on them: Guy Toyn, the co-owner of the news agency Court News TV. Toyn goes from court to court, reporting on stories he hopes will make the national news—but often don’t. He is a larger-than-life character, and this piece is as much about him as it is about the workings of the Old Bailey.
Toyn – a towering man of 61 with a voice you can hear through walls – was deciding which courts to visit with a teenage intern who was shadowing him for the week. The 18 courts at the Old Bailey, properly known as the Central criminal court of England and Wales, are the setting for the major criminal trials of Greater London. On offer today, a Tuesday in June, was the usual frantic menu of disturbed human behaviour: in court 12, a case of cocaine-smuggling in a shipment of bananas; in court 11, a man appealing against the refusal of a shotgun licence after he had threatened to kill an employee; in courts 6, 7 and 8, a range of stabbings.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/10/17/chortle-chortle-scribble-scribble-inside-the-old-bailey-with-britains-last-court-reporters/
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