This man could be sweetened by lemon juice.

We suspect Mortimer Ironwood is not the product of a bad background; he attended St Christopher’s Very Best School for Privileged Boys and we have no reason to suppose his mother and father lacked parenting skills. Rather, he was just always this way. Certainly, some of the little girls who went to kindergarten with him still complain of their heads aching where he used to tie their pigtails to door handles. These poor women remain traumatized although they are now wrinkly senior citizens.

So although Mortimer Ironwood probably suffers awfully from gout, small man syndrome and gavel-related repetitive strain injury, he is so horrid you can’t quite bring yourself to care.

Mortimer Ironwood is known far and wide as “The Hanging Judge” and parents often threaten their little children with being sent to see him when they misbehave. Even his rather sweet natured housekeeper, Mrs Battersby, hates him and says that she is in it for the money. On Thursday she said to an enquiring reporter from “The Star”

“The moment he steps out of those big giant shoes, and that robe, he’s just a pipsqueak! I swear, sometimes its all I can do not to shove that tyrant’s gavel right down his… ah… well… I mean strictly off the record of course, just between us alright…”

You can hardly blame her. Nobody ever visits his house, but it is rumoured that he wears his judge’s wig everywhere, and sleeps with his gavel on the pillow beside him. Mrs Battersby told that reporter he thumps the table with it at meal times when he wants his cup of tea filled up. Clearly, this is a man used to having it all his own way.