The 'facetiest' red man in Jamaica

Gordon Robinson, Contributor

My learned friend, Winston Ian Phillipson, passed away on December 2. Ian was a great lawyer. By the time I joined the noble profession in 1979, he was already a fixture at Myers Fletcher and Gordon and a giant in the business.

As you'll appreciate as we go along, Ian was a multifaceted human being who was loved by all who came under his influence.

To appreciate the man's greatness, you have to understand that law wasn't his career of choice. Ian was a musician of the highest calibre and a member of the Vikings show band. Over the years, his knowledge of the history of all music never ceased to amaze me, and he introduced me to such delights as Sandy Nelson's Let There Be Drums and Louis Prima's Angelina (Zooma Zooma). But his all-time favourite was Antoine Dominique 'Fats' Domino Jr.

It's time I'm walkin' to New Orleans

I'm walkin' to New Orleans

I'm going to need two pair of shoes

When I get through walkin' to you.

When I get back to New Orleans

His music career was derailed by a combination of his mother, who didn't like it for him, and his mentor in the law, the legendary W.S.K. 'Whisky' Gordon, who made it clear beyond peradventure that no articled clerk of his would be found dead playing music in nightclubs. It's a testament to Ian's brilliance and versatility that he compartmentalised his great love, put his head down, and became one of Jamaica's best commercial lawyers. But he never forgot or stopped playing his music, and one of my fondest possessions is a CD of music Ian composed and recorded at his home studio and sent to me by email.

Ian's proudest honour was self-bestowed. Opinionated to the core, Ian was the self-appointed 'facetiest' red man in Jamaica. Now, there's nobody blocking my path to that crown. A pity.

Ian had strong opinions on everything. But his opinions were always delivered with a deadpan humour that was all his own. An afternoon spent with this raconteur supreme in the hills near Boone Hall turned into a column headlined 'The essence of logic' (Gleaner, March 9, 2010). When the current Cabinet was announced, and I wrote that Reverend Ronnie wasn't qualified to be education minister, the following popped up in my inbox from Ian:

What's wrong with you?

Mr Thwaites, as minister of education, can teach our children all kinds of things that old fossils like you and me cannot. Like how to lodge a cheque made out to the GPO to your firm's account, how to mortgage church property and pocket the loan proceeds; how to [details deleted to protect the angelic] ... , all this being done while serving Communion at Mass in the Roman Catholic Church. Don't you think he's qualified?

In these trying times, I suggest we return to the one really real Jamaican product we have left and that's music, real music, not the noise they are proliferating now.

Ian never forgot a legal matter in which he'd been involved. In August, having written a series on greats of the past 50 years for Jamaica 50, I took off to attend to some medical niggles and so sent off the following email circular:

"Between yesterday and August 20, I'll be off attending to some minor (but very irritating) medical issues. Also, I've been ordered by The Old Ball and Chain to rest."

Ian's response was swift:

Robbie,

Loved your recent articles in The Gleaner, especially your tribute to Mayer Matalon and your sports history.

I don't know where you find the time to research all that.

One thing, though, which I'm not going to tell anybody else, West Indies Home Contractors (WIHC) (for whom I was the lawyer) did not do Hope Pastures. That was done by Frank Hall Homes Limited and Surrey Construction Ltd.

Be very careful of thieving doctors (with whom I have had to deal with recently) and I hope everything will be all right until I see you again.

This was my first inkling that he had been ailing for quite a while, without a word of complaint to anybody. And his quick fact-checking gave me time to prepare my defence to any who may have noticed the flaw.

As the 'facetiest' red man in Jamaica, Ian would've appreciated a recent contribution to this newspaper by one Maurice Tomlinson, putting the one I call Saint Shirley (the purest of the pure) properly in her place. I endorse every word Maurice Tomlinson wrote. Peter Espeut's predictably shrill response on Saint Shirley's behalf ('The dictatorship of 'feelings''; Gleaner, December 14, 2012), in which he likened Tomlinson's behaviour to that of King Mwanga II, who slaughtered many Christians in the 1880s, would've
been cutely chivalrous had it not been so revealing, on so many levels,
of the warped thinking behind the comparison.

Give it
up, Peter. This isn't an issue that can be addressed by Christian (or
any) dogma. May I politely (well, all right, not so politely) suggest
you put on your environmentalist hat instead and look to the north and
west where there's a proposed north-south highway link to be built that
an academic geologist (who is yet to build a single road) says will
devastate the environment.

HOMOPHOBIA IS
REAL

Now there's an issue into which you can sink your
teeth, Peter, although I believe I join most of Jamaica in looking
forward to your hunger strike protest. By the way, Peter, 'homophobia'
is very much a real word and a real worldwide disgrace. It's not
'concocted'. Look at the Oxford Dictionary (online at
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/homophobia
for sloths like me who decline the exercise that'll take us to a
library) which defines 'homophobia' as "a strong dislike and
fear of homosexual people", and 'homophobic' as its adjectival
derivative.

I will say that The
Gleaner ought to have offered Saint Shirley some protection by
identifying Maurice Tomlinson as an openly homosexual man who is also a
claimant in the high-profile lawsuit against TVJ and CVM TV over their
refusal to air a gay-tolerance advertisement. This would facilitate
readers' assessment of the independence, or otherwise, of his
critique.

Please don't think I hold any brief for
Saint Shirley, whose holier-than-thou attitude often reminds me of a
cheer I once heard from the fans of a visiting netball team from
Norfolk, England:

We are
the girls from

(Chorus: Norfolk,
Norfolk);

We are the greatest

(Chorus);

We
don't smoke; we don't
drink;

(Chorus)

Rest
in peace, my learned friend. That one was for you. Enjoy New
Orleans.

Peace and love.

Gordon
Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to
columns@gleanerjm.com.