Tavares-Finson displays humour, roasting self at calling to Inner Bar

Queen's Counsel Tom Tavares-Finson has always held that having a sense of humour is an essential part of being a good advocate.

In fact, anyone who knows Tavares-Finson will no doubt be aware that he’s not one to shy away from laughing at himself.

In 2009, when speculations were rife that Tavares-Finson would again seek to venture into representational politics, he dismissed the talks at a West Kingston Constituency Conference by making light of his past political defeats.

(He had lost against Portia Simpson in St Andrew South Western in the 1980 election; against Hugh Small, 1989, in St Catherine Southern; against Karl Samuda, the a PNP member, in 1993, in St Andrew North Central; and against Sharon Hay Webster in 1997, in St Catherine South Central.

"I think there is a book at PNP headquarters that says, 'How to beat Tom Tavares-Finson'. I think they wrote that book,” he said.

Tavares-Finson’s humour was on display again last week Thursday as he had scores of guests, including Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Cabinet members, colleague attorneys, former and current judges — who gathered at the Supreme Court for his and Valerie Neita-Robertson's appointment as Queen’s Counsel — in stitches.

The occasion could easily be mistaken for a Celebrity Roast, save for the fact that there was no celebrity and Tavares-Finson was roasting himself.

The QC recounted visiting with his mother, Hyacinth, on a recent evening to inform her of his latest accomplishments. He told her of his appointment as president of the Senate and that he would be made a Queen’s Counsel.

After he was leaving, he said, his sister informed him that his mother wanted to talk with him so he went back.

His mother told him: “Your dad and I were always proud of you. We knew that you would make something of yourself. We had no doubt. Is your brother Tom we worried about.”

The packed courtroom erupted in rapturous laughter, so too the throng watching the proceedings on a large screen set up just outside the Number One Courtroom.

Chief Justice Zaila McCalla, herself laughing, said: “Silence in court.”

“…I think William put her up to it,” Tavares-Finson said to chuckles.

He related another story:

“I was at Spanish Town court a couple years ago and the court was packed. You could hardly find a way to walk, and as I got through, a man approached me and took my books and said, ‘People! People! Here he is, the best lawyer in Jamaica! Mek way. Mek way. See him a come. Come through lawyer. Come through. A lawyer this. If uno have a case this is the man uno fi use. Him mek Norman Manley dem look like dem naah try.’

“I drew myself to my full height and stepped regally through the crowd. I sat in my car when the man rapped on the window. I wound it down and he said, ‘Mr Hamilton, beg you $1000 nuh’.”

The chuckles that had been building exploded into thunderous laughter, that echoed throughout the building.

After he was through with himself, Tavares-Finson solicited sustained laughter when he said of Neita-Robertson that she never had a guilty client in her close to 40 years as an attorney, “no matter what the court said, even if it is the Privy Council”.