Animal QC

'Extraordinary... a great autobiography - Libby Purves, Radio 4 Midweek 
'Hugely entertaining, heartwarming and inspiring... made me guffaw.' - Mail on Sunday 
'Riotous unvarnished candour' - Daily Telegraph 
'A compelling delight' - Daily Mail 
'Gary Bell is one of Britain's leading criminal barristers. He's also got one of the most interesting CVs I have ever seen.' - Sarah Brett, BBC Radio Five Live 

GARY BELL QC is one of Britain's top criminal barristers. He has his own hit BBC TV show, a Who's Who entry and a wife whose family is listed in Burke's Landed Gentry. Not bad for a Nottinghamshire lad who grew up in a slum, left school without taking a single exam, got a criminal conviction for fiddling pub fruit machines and slept rough on the streets.
Gary was born in 1959, the chronic bedwetting son of a teenaged cigarette factory worker and a nineteen-year-old miner. With no ambition, he left his tough comprehensive at fifteen to follow his dad down the pit, but was scared of the dark and subterannean vampires.
He spent his teenage years as a drunken football hooligan known as 'Animal' (for his terrible eating habits, not his fighting skills), baking pies at Pork Farms, driving a forklift at Asda, and trying and failing to become (among other things) a miner, a bricklayer, and a fireman. After being convicted of fraud and sentenced to six months, he was destitute and homeless so he hitch-hiked to France in search of adventure.
After years of drifting, he eventually decided to try to make something of himself. After three uproarious years at Bristol University - he somehow managed to wangle a job with a Beverly Hills law firm before he'd even graduated - he went on to become a barrister and, twenty years later, achieved the rare honour of being appointed Queen's Counsel. 
His preposterous story - which contains some fascinating details of the many major cases he has worked on - reads like a strange dream and redefines the word 'amazing', as well as being extremely funny, very moving, and utterly life-affirming. 
 

Dettagli