Come-hither Herbies

Vanity Fair has cancelled its “storied” post-Oscars party but I am glad to report that in London the Vanity Fair “Portraits” exhibition carries on regardless at the National Portrait Gallery. As usual with the NPG, Herbert Smith is very much in evidence; to mark the event the firm will hold an exclusive preview tomorrow evening for its delighted friends.

Much of the “preview” came in the very invitation, a gatefold image of Julianne Moore as Ingres’s La Grand Odalisque which is, it must be said, quite an eyeful. The problem to-day is that one never knows what marks the bounds of good taste and PC acceptability. Would sticking up the Julianne Moore image over your workstation be regarded as insulting to women? Or would the reverse image of Douglas Fairbanks Jnr and Joan Crawford, erotically back-to-back, be too heterosexually in your face (so to speak)?

I think I definitely need some legal advice on this one. Maybe Herbies could set up a little litigation clinic in the cloaks?

Get a (second) life

I only make that suggestion because, frankly, lawyers get everywhere. Or at least everywhere that crime and corruption can be found. So it hasn’t taken too long for PCB Litigation, one of the country’s leading fraud firms, to open a virtual office in Second Life, the internet-based virtual world.

Now PCB is by no means the first law firm to go virtual but, signalling the end of the Age of Innocence in Second Life, it is one of the earliest to focus on fraud. At present, according to the firm, $1.5 million (£775,000) is spent each day in Second Life by its 20 million users making it “a prime target for on-line fraudsters” and PCB’s mission is to “combat fraud on an international basis”.

This is where someone of my mature youth gets flummoxed. Is it “international” because it takes place outside of UK jurisdic-tion? Or because fraudsters probably also go under the name of “The Manager, Bill and Exchange, Bank of Bukhino Faso”?

“Fraudsters are constantly seeking innovative ways of committing fraud and evading the authorities and Second Life is clearly an accessible target,” says PCB, which I guess can now say it is virtually international.

Guilt-edged inquiry

With the bomb defences going back up in Northern Ireland to defend the “Chuckle Brothers” and others against a revamped Real IRA, the familiar pattern of life in the virtual world of Ulster is reemerging. But the sense of unreality was reinforced last week when the updated costs of the Government’s Bloody Sunday inquiry were reported as over £180 million. London law firms – whose names I won’t mention – are heavily involved in this and the justification was to help bring “closure” to the 26 years of suspicion and resentment (remember, the inquiry was launched in 1998). Of course, justice is priceless. But maybe it should not be timeless.

Virtually fat (cat) free

On the other hand, if you want to see how very much can be done for very little (or indeed virtually nothing) then Clifford Chance on Thursday is the place to be. Incongruous as it may seem, this bastion of the world’s banking system is hosting a lecture to the UK MicroFinance Club by Nobel Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus. The topic is Microfinance and Social Business for Poverty Alleviation. And the answer, surely, is to hold a government inquiry.

edward.fennell@yahoo.co.uk

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