The case against J.K.Rowling in Edinburgh's Criminal Court for shoplifting went ahead yesterday.
Woolworth's representative Lionel Peasbody gave testimony to the effect that he saw a lady wearing a long black cloak, pointed boots and tall peaked cap enter the store carrying a basket that she proceeded to fill as she walked along the aisles.
He called the house detectives immediately and she was apprehended just as she reached the exit doors.
Manager and Ex-police sergeant Patrick Walsh said she slapped him repeatedly about the shoulders with a black stick like some sort of "wand" and cursed at him in what he took to be Latin or possibly Bulgarian. He said he found the experience quite unnerving and had to physically restrain the defendant whereupon she bit "quite hard" into his wrist. CCT footage was shown to substantiate the manager's statement.
Counsel for the defendant pleaded that their client was going through an emotional time as a result of being passed over yet again in the New Years' honours list as she had hired the QE2 for a celebration banquet for her media friends and professional bloggers in anticipation of a Damehood.
Rowling was not there to defend the case but a statement was read out on her behalf.
It stated that the Damehood was important to her as it would stop people taking a swipe at her for plagiarism. Not receiving it had been a severe blow to her self-esteem. She had nothing against Woolworth's personally and even if she insisted that everybody working on her Potter movies had to be English she was certainly not a racist. She would not like people to think that the on-going Adrian Jacobs case against her for plagiarism had instilled into her any form of anti-Semitism.
As for the shoplifting charge it was purely an unfortunate regression to her days of poverty and severe physical hardship and deprivation in Edinburgh when she had to steal food from supermarkets and other shops in order to feed herself and her starving child.
She was prepared, she stated, to purchase the store for twice its market value if Woolworths was agreeable and to present it to the Salvation Army on behalf of the Labour Party. It is expected that Ms. Rowling will be acquitted on compassionate grounds.
Her agent Mr. Little and his staff, her lawyer Neil Blair, and their mutual friend Lucifer, also known as Satan who currently has offices at Bloomsbury Publishing, were not available to give character witness. All are presently engaged in concocting the next Harry Potter book.
