Philip OPAS QC interview 4/8/2003

I understand you fought one boxing match as a child and your opponent was advised not to fight you - is that correct?

I was so small that they didn’t have a weight to cover my weight – there wasn’t a division. So I was fighting a boy a year older, about three inches taller and nearly a stone heavier and obviously he was going to clean me up.

They couldn’t prevent my entering because by entering I got a point for my house, which was what I wanted to do. And the master told this kid that he would get six on the backside if he hit me! He was promised he’d win the fight. So for three rounds he stuck his left hand out and held onto my forehead so I couldn’t reach him, and I was fanning the air for three rounds and I was the only one trying.

So in the end, he was crowned winner, and I went very crook because I was the only one throwing leather and I had a lot of support from my housemates and from my classmates. But the decision stood and I was beaten.

But you got your reputation for pugnacity that way!

I was called Tiger as a nickname and anything less tigrish would be hard to imagine. But I didn’t want to be a swot.

What motivated you to study law?

When I was nine, my headmaster called me in and said ‘Opas, you’re going to be a lawyer’. I don’t remember having any aptitude or psychological testing, and you didn’t argue with your headmaster. From then on, my curriculum was set: Greek, Latin, French, British History, English in all its forms, no science.

And to this day, you’re still not a mathematician.

Oh, if I added three long columns of figures three times, I’d have three different answers with no likelihood of any being correct. I’m still hopeless at mathematics.

Conducted for the Bar Oral History project by Juliette Brodsky in the Neil McPhee Room, Owen Dixon Chambers and filmed by Stewart Carter (People Pictures)