There's an old joke Dunbar likes to tell all his new clients: What do lawyers use for contraception? Their personalities.

The joke expresses the whole contradiction of Dunbar's character. He's the honest scumbag, the straightforward hypocrite, the con man who tells you he's going to rip you off.

As far as Dunbar is concerned, Principles are where you buy your knickers when Marks & Spenser are closed. His practice is a business and he'll do what he's paid for - unless he can get away with less.

In his youth, Dunbar couldn't choose between being a wide boy and a bovver boy, so he became a why bother boy with John Motson's sense of political correctness.

Dunbar is a philosopher schooled in the University of Life. In his view, if you don't hate it, you're misinformed. He's misanthropic, misogynistic, misogamic, but most of all he's miserable.

So Dunbar's approach to the law is rather like his approach to fashion: scruffy, flabby and middle-aged, and somehow you're always aware he dresses to the right.

But Dunbar can work the streets. And he's been in the inner-city long enough, to know just how dark and dangerous they can be. So if you can take a short cut or slip down a back alley to avoid them, why not?