“These days, the law is my hobby,” says John Boyle, 53, an expert underwater film-maker who practises law in Porthleven, an ancient, storm-lashed port on The Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. Boyle decamped to Cornwall straight after qualifying with Herbert Smith in 1980. “I grew up in Oldham but had always been drawn to the sea. I knew at the outset of my career that I wanted to work in either Devon or Cornwall, and fortunately got the first job I applied for — as a litigation lawyer in Helston.”

Helston is a rugged town on The Lizard; its principal claim to fame is in being the birthplace of Bob Fitzsimmons, Britain’s first world heavyweight boxing champion. It proved to be a congenial place from which Boyle could forge an illustrious career as one of the first solicitors to enjoy higher court rights of audience. “The story goes that a long time ago barristers coming from London to take briefs in Cornwall would be robbed as soon as they set foot in the county,” Boyle says. “Accordingly, solicitors in the far west were granted rights of audience long before the rest of the profession got them in 1998.”

Apocryphal or not, custom and practice certainly gave solicitors in parts of the far west higher court rights of audience, and Boyle utilized them to notable effect, winning the first 12 of 13 cases in the Court of Appeal. But at the same time as building up a successful, eponymous practice in criminal law, Boyle was also indulging in his passion for the ocean.

“I learnt to dive when I was 17, in County Kerry, Ireland,” he recalls. “I never had any training in television or camerawork, but soon started to experiment with underwater camera housings.”

Boyle acknowledges that the law helped him pursue his nascent interest in filming. “The more successful the firm became, the more I was able to travel. I found myself in the Cayman Islands with underwater film equipment and once back in Cornwall put together a film with the help of Triple S, a production company based in Penzance. I expected to sell maybe 100 copies but saw a copy of the Television Yearbook in Triple S’s offices. Thanks to the book I discovered that film agents existed, and sent the film off to 20 or so of them. Four of them got back to me and the result, eventually, was a film called Caymania which was sold to National Geographic worldwide.”

Boyle has not looked back since. His next film was Treasures of the Cocos Islands, about diving in a marine paradise some 200 miles off the coast of Costa Rica. Again, rather than sell to a few friends, the worldwide rights were acquired by the Discovery Channel. “Suddenly, I found that I was a film-maker,” says Boyle with a wry smile, as if he still cannot quite believe his good fortune.

Under the auspices of a dedicated production company of his own, www.sharkbayfilms.com, Boyle has made another 20 acclaimed underwater films, assisted by two Porthleven locals, Fionn Crow Howieson and Eddie Rourke. Shark Bay Films also takes on an eclectic mix of other projects, including all the promotional work for the tourist boards of Papua New Guinea and the Seychelles (“someone’s got to do it, I guess,” says Boyle), making airline in-flight safety films and working on a successful election campaign for an African president. There has been a film about big-wave surfing in the UK and Ireland, and Boyle has also found the time to write what is generally agreed to be the definitive guide to underwater film making, A Step By Step Guide To Underwater Video.

So where does the law fit in to Boyle’s life, now? “Very well,” he says, fresh from a stint into the early hours as the duty solicitor at Penzance police station. “Film-making is my main occupation now but I still work as a consultant to my practice, John Boyle & Co, which was taken over by my colleagues in 2000. I also do prosecution work for the CPS, am on the local duty solicitor rotas and do private civil work, too.” Indeed, while the sea is his grand passion — “it’s a love affair that’s never faded” — Boyle relishes his occasional reappearances in the Cornish Crown Courts.

“It’s a real pleasure to get up, put a suit on, have a shave, drive to town and go before a judge who I’ve known for years. They’ll tease me by saying ‘Nice of you to forego the ocean for this case, Mr Boyle’ but it’s all good-humoured and great fun. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

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