Wombling free.
It won't wash out the taste of Womble Bond Dickinson’s work for the Post Office, but a lawyer jumping around naked in the woods before traversing the UK to raise money for stroke victims may be a cheek-wobbling step in the right direction.
A source pointed RollOnFriday towards the “extraordinary” video of Senior Counsel Adam Taylor-Smith baring his buttocks on TikTok, where he goes by @ATSBlisters.
Captioned ‘Kit or not?’, the vid begins with the fully-clothed real estate lawyer extolling the virtues of vintage hiking garb.
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“As many of you know the walking community’s been deeply, deeply split in recent years between those who favour a more traditional tweed approach, those who prefer more modern materials, and even those who think you should dispense with clothes completely”, explains Taylor-Smith.
His “preferred weekend walking gear” comprises a tweed ensemble which is “about 30 years old” but “breathable”. It features braces and a fishtail back, “looks great” and it’s “figure-hugging”.
But not as figure-hugging as a birthday suit, so “as an alternative approach I thought I’d try some naked rambling”, narrates the Senior Counsel, flashing up his route round Hazelmere.
If you go down in the woods today
You'd better not go alone
It's lovely down in the woods today
But safer to stay at home
Describing his bracing trial yomp as “quite fun”, Taylor-Smith concludes that walking without clothes “probably would be limited in bad weather”.
He also stopped for tea at the National Trust tearooms. Its patrons are probably used to this sort of thing, but who knows what China’s TikTok overlords will make of the solicitor's powerful glutes appearing in the algorithm.
Taylor-Smith’s video was made in aid of a 1,250 mile solo hike from Land’s End to John O’Groats which he’s undertaking for the Stroke Association.
@atsblisters #lejog #hiking #tweed #nakedrambling #strokeassociation #haslemere #wildcamping ♬ original sound - Adam Taylor-Smith
ROF caught up with the lawyer before he set off on Monday on the epic walk, during which he’ll spend his nights in a bivvy bag.
“People I love have had their lives badly affected by strokes and I want to raise money for the Stroke Association and the great work that they do”, he said.
“Most recently, last year a 53-year-old lawyer friend from law school days had a bad stroke and spent seven months in hospital and is on the slow path to recovery. It could happen to anyone”, said Taylor-Smith, who’s taken a superbly-timed sabbatical from Womble Bond Dickinson to undertake the challenge.
If spectators are lucky they’ll catch him in tweed, and if they’re really lucky they won’t. “I have tried very traditional tweed hiking gear and no kit options during my training for the long walk” he told ROF. “There are definite advantages for both.”
“I haven’t quite decided what I will wear on any given day. I think it might get quite breezy, but the Sun (and moon) must come out eventually!”
You can donate to Taylor Smith’s bail fund JustGiving page here.
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Comments
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Wombles= Horizon Scandal
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If the entire partnership were made to walk across Britain naked, that would be a start
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Is this bloke from Wombles or is the WBD link because there’s a cock in the story?
#JusticeforthePostMasters
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You can do as much charity work as you like, but if you choose to work at Womble Bond Dickinson you are scum. Everything you touch in the office is tainted by the suffering of the postmasters.
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Thanks for the giggles. This is priceless
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Stinging nettles. Brambles. Wind and rain. I can't see it catching on.
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Adam’s a great guy and any involvement with Horizon very much predates his time there. I not a Womble, for the record.
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Seems ironic he’ll no doubt be walking through many of the villages and towns where his partners helped destroy the lives of hardworking PMs. Will Parsons, Beezer, Dilley et al join him for a leg on the walk?
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I do not like this.
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KIT (upvote) OR NOT (downvote)?
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Dealing with him over many years was bad enough (Anonymous @9.47 the electorate appears to disagree by four to one, that's a landslide) but seeing him naked is traumatic.
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“Truth Bomb” above calls me “scum” for taking upaid leave to raise money for the Stroke Association in the memory of lost and/or affected loved ones. I hope that I raise lots of money for this great charity. I suggest that Truth Bomb makes a sizeable donation for being such heartless idiot. He should feel free to call me on my mob that he can get by googling me if he/she is not coward enough to have a conversation about who is scum here. I don’t he has the courage to want to talk to me. Back to the hiking now……
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I’ll decline the opportunity to speak to an angry naked man, but say sorry to Adam. He did a really good thing here and I shouldn’t have upset him.
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Laudable, especially in light of how cold it has been this year
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That’s all well and good, Adam, but your firm is still fundamentally evil for having acted for the post office in helping to enable a shocking miscarriage of justice (then acting disgracefully in defending the GLO). The entire firm is implicated given the huge profits extracted from the taxpayer to help PO in its destruction of innocent people. No amount of arse-bearing will deflect from these simple truths.
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Is WBD going to pay £37m back to the postmasters?
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A brilliantly timed sabbatical indeed. Hopefully, Adam will realise he should make it permanent whilst on his hike and take his clients and work to a better firm with a lower dickhead ratio.
WBD specialise in perpetrating and enabling miscarriages of justice - the post office is not the only one. They don’t deserve to be associated with this story or what Adam is doing.
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six figure bonus payments when holding back disclosable information that would have saved lives. Andy Parsons you should be walking around the globe naked my friend or could just give your six figure bonuses to the families?
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Well done Adam.
Your firm doesn’t measure up to you. WBD still haven’t said sorry to those postmasters they hounded for years.
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Just cranked out 39,000 steps today and I’ve now walked over 80 miles to Padstow from Land’s End. I feel a bit knackered and realised that this is something of a strenuous challenge particularly the South West coastal path. I will plough on to raise money for the Stroke Association and the important stuff they do. Many thanks for the ROL people who have donated. to JustGiving.
Well I nearly got an apology from “Truth Bomb” but wrapped up in the insult that I was “angry”. I’m actually not angry but I just think this person is a graceless idiot who is too cowardly to want to speak to me who he labelled as “scum”. I have a perfect mental picture of them sitting Gollum like at their PC in the underpants typing constant bile.
As an aside, I joined Womble 3 years ago and I am when not hiking a real estate lawyer. I am not an owner and I know nothing about the post office issue as this is totally not my area and long before I joined and frankly above my pay grade. I doubt that many of 1000 lawyers there know anything much about this either as most of this relates to one of the constituent parts (Bond Pearce) of the current firm pre-merger and work carrying out by a handful of people. What I can say is that the people I deal with on regular basis at the firm are thoughtful and high on integrity and frankly very decent people. I think it is pretty odd and juvenile to vilify an entire organisation based on the alleged actions of a handful of people years ago. The SRA and others are there to judge members of the professional and their actions.
This is my view and you can now hurl some further abusive me if you want but in the meantime I will continue to walk to raise money for a charity, that I think makes a positive difference. Before anyone asks, this post and my charity walk is 100% my initiative and nothing to do with anyone else.
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Funny that truth bomb is damming charitiable work, hard to take a moral high ground with that outlook. Maybe in the future truth bomb can do some charitable work of their own and make a real difference rather than obstructing charitable work.
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Adam joined WBD long after all this stuff and I would bet a £ to a penny he has no intentions of going back after his walk. Good on you mate.
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A hair shirt might be a suitable alternative.
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@ Truth Bomb, 03/05/24 09:06
I agree with you and all the other posts giving WBD a hard time because its well-deserved and the ones involved in the WBD scandal (some of whom I know personally from previous matters) are grade A c*nts. I just hope you and everyone else on this thread will express the same level of disgust and hatred for HSF.
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I knew they were barefaced liars but barecheeked too?
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Actually Adam, I did apologise.
Womble Bond Dickinson have yet to say sorry to any of the Postmasters. Do you agree that it would be commendable if Womble Bond Dickinson staff were to phone each victim of the Post Office scandal to apologise and explain themselves? Do you agree that it would be commendable if Womble Bond Dickinson was to donate the £35m+ they received to appropriate charities too?
I didn’t mean the reference to you being angry to further antagonise. You write like someone who is angry and I think you have a right to be angry. My language was over the top and I regret that.
Look, I was wrong to align someone who works for WBD, but does something good in their spare time, with the brand WBD and, in particular, the lawyers who profited from the Post Office litigation. Those are the ones I dislike and I’m pretty sure plenty of WBD staff are equally angry about their actions too. I’m sure WBD lawyers will say that when the time is right.
HSF has been mentioned. We should be angry at them too. Well, actually only those involved and certainly not those who weren’t involved and are doing something good.
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A former sub-postmaster has spoken to The Lawyer about his treatment at the hands of various lawyers involved in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal…
When asked about his experiences with Womble Bond, Castleton told The Lawyer: “He [Dilley] seemed excited by the pain he was causing… he thought it was highly amusing.” He added: “he would often giggle.”
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The decision of WBD to promote those in the Southampton, Bristol and other offices involved in going after innocent postmasters is, at the very least, controversial.
I’m not sure I would join a firm where the management did that.
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Which office did the really bad Wombles operate from?
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So we can add gross indecency to the list of Womble misdemeanors, then?
Because it’s for charity doesn’t mean it’s ok.
If it was, charity wan8s would be all the rage.
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Dirty Man, being naked in public in England and Wales is not a criminal offence, unless there are additional factors at play.
There probably aren’t in this instance, but his reference to imagining a stranger sitting in their underpants does come across as grubby.
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At the outset of his cross-examination, Julian Blake, counsel to the Inquiry, asked Dilley:
“Having reflected on the evidence of the Inquiry as a whole, is there anything that you would like to say to Mr Castleton or his family?”
Dilley replied: “No there isn’t.”
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Who said English eccentricity was dead?
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This undermined my confidence in the profession,
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A selective social conscience is better than no social conscience, but can you be a good person and choose to work for WBD?
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The chap’s got a decent rig on him. I bet he’s packing a monstrous choad as well