He became well known in the field for championing such works as the Sex Pistols’ album “Never Mind the Bollocks” (charged with public indecency), Oz magazine’s schoolkid edition (featuring a centerfold of the beloved cartoon character Rupert the Bear with an enormous erection) and Hubert Selby Jr.’s transgressive novel “Last Exit to Brooklyn.” All were prosecuted in England, and all but the Sex Pistols under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. He was of the “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” school of thinking. My father defended a lot of murderers - his favorite clients, because he said they had generally got rid of the one person on earth who was really bugging them, and a kind of peace had descended over them - but his other specialty was obscenity. He was an author and a criminal defense barrister - in his words, “the only playwright ever to have defended a murderer in the central criminal court at the Old Bailey” - and his prowess in both professions rode on his ability to see past easy morality and to respect the fact that the truth is never one-sided and therefore art should not be, either. My father, John Mortimer, brought me up to believe that you can be a good person and kill someone and a perfectly awful person who never gets so much as a parking ticket your whole life.
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