David Dabbs, 1962–2025

I met “David Dabbs, D-A-B-B-S” in the students’ common room at Lincoln’s Inn in the first week of Bar School1983. It was the hustings for places on the Students’ Committee. He got elected; I didn’t. And our paths never crossed until the Cumberland Lodge weekend July 1984. It was after the exams and before the results. It was a gloriously sunny weekend. It was in the days of ‘relaxed’ advocacy training weekends and it was great fun. Part of the fun was that David and I became friends from the off. And that fun, and friendship, continued for 41 years. We were pupils together. (It was almost like ‘Brothers in Law’). We shared a flat off the Old Kent Road with a proper sarf London Victorian boozer on corner, and a corner shop that hired out VHS movies and sold ‘Red Stripe’ lager on the other. (It wasn’t as bad as ‘The Young Ones’). He bought a telly with his first brief fee. I bought the VHS recorder with mine. If he was with us now we could both recite the complete dialogue from ‘Bladerunner’ and “Where Eagles Dare” at the drop of a hat. David loved movies. It’s because of him that I call them movies. In my second six I was run over in High Holborn and ended up in hospital where they cut off 1/3 of my 3-piece suit to examine and eventually put a ‘pot’ on my right leg. David came to pick me up from A&E but as he couldn’t unlock my room he brought me a pair of his own grey jogging bottoms to wear. I was 6’1.5” back then, and David … well, you know. As I had been given the next day off by my senior clerk, albeit somewhat begrudgingly, David had the bright idea that there was no need for me to go straight home and made the marvellous suggestion we go off to the pub and then to the cinema. And thus stylishly attired in grey marl elasticated ‘capri’ pants, complete with a pair of crutches, I swanned through central London to see ‘Ghostbusters’ with him. That was still in the early days. He made me laugh so much over the next four decades. And I felt joy on the occasions I was able to make him laugh. We went through the highs and lows that every life has. He was always there for me when it really mattered. And as always we ended up having great fun; (Fair do’s, the 6 months when he put me up in his spare room in the mid 90’s was a bit like ‘Men Behaving Badly). With work, and life, and neither of us managing to get to London as often as we used to, we didn’t see much of each other in the last 5 years or so. But that didn’t matter. We were pals. We were shipmates. We were friends. David was my friend. And I miss him.