- [Rumpole discusses the Timsons, whom he is defending, with Liz Probert]
- Horace Rumpole: The Timsons would hate to be called working people. They are entirely middle-class villains. And they are very conservative too. They live according to strict monetarist principles and the free-market economy. And they're dead against the closed shop - they believe shops should be open all hours of the night... preferably with a jemmy!
- [talking about the "Chateau Fleet Street" wine that Rumpole is drinking]
- Horace Rumpole: Of course, there is another reason why I drink Pomeroy's plonk. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you drink enough of this stuff, you stand a good chance of getting blotto.
- Claude Erskine-Brown: [horrified] Horace! Good heavens! The purpose of wine is not to get you blotto.
- Horace Rumpole: You astonish me.
- Claude Erskine-Brown: It's to taste sunlight trapped in a glass. To remember some green slope in Burgundy, or a village by the Gironde.
- Horace Rumpole: I dare say there is a patch of barren soil in some corner of a foreign field where the Fleet Street grapes struggle for existence. Probably somewhere between a cow-shed and a pissoir.