Moment lawyer uses C-word on BBC Radio 5 live

Shock: BBC 5 live presenter Nicky Campbell had to interrupt Mr Goldberg
BBC
Sebastian Mann11 September 2015

Audiences listened in shock this morning as an esteemed lawyer used the C-word on live radio.

Jonathan Goldberg QC was speaking on BBC 5 live Breakfast about ex-soldier Sergeant Alexander Blackman, who was jailed by court martial for a minimum of eight years over the 2013 murder of an Afghan insurgent.

The lawyer, who is leading a team in a bid to have the killing downgraded to manslaughter, told the show: "He [the Afghan soldier] had just been in a firefight and he is dying anyway because he had a great big hole in his back from the Apache gunship that had just fired at him, and worst it was the coup de grace, that Blackman gave him."

He then went on to describe the moment Blackman shot the fighter, quoting a swear-word apparently used by Blackman at the time.

"And he also says: 'It's more than you would have done for us you c***' and how right he is."

At that point presenter Nicky Campbell is forced to interrupt and stutteringly tells the lawyer: "Oh please, please, we can't, we can't have..."

Mr Goldberg then protests that he is only quoting but will not swear again.

"I understand that," says Campbell, "you've set it out very graphically," before being caught on live video footage of the incident looking irritably across the studio.

Mr Goldberg, who has worked on cases including ones involving a Kray brother, is described on his website as one of the UK's "leading trial advocates and defenders" with a rate of acquittals in high-profile jury trials that is "second to none".

His client Blackman was convicted of murder in 2013 and lost an appeal in May last year.

In the Daily Mail today, his wife Claire was quoted as saying: "The fact that he is now serving a life sentence for killing a dying Taliban insurgent is just wrong, this was war.

"Had the roles been reversed that man would have tortured my husband before killing him."

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