Work Life Quiz: Richard Tyson, 3PB

What was your first-ever job?

Ice-cream salesman, then delivering yachts to the Mediterranean.

What was your worst experience as a pupil?

Not being taken on as a tenant. Twice.

Where’s the best place to go if you want to find out what’s really going on in chambers?

Our ’wine club’ or the email account of former chief clerk, now consultant, Charles Charlick.

What do you do at weekends?

Game fishing, sailing or woodland management.

What’s your favourite restaurant?

Le Cafe Marche, Smithfield.

If you weren’t a lawyer what would you have been?

A rural GP.

What was the first record you ever bought?

Paul Anka’s Diana.

Who’s your hero and why?

Stephen Maturin in Patrick O’Brien’s Napoleonic novels. He is brave, true and passionate, and has a hidden hinterland.

What’s the best thing about your job?

Inviting home-grown pupils to join.

What’s the toughest thing about your job?

Having to disappoint home-grown pupils we feel cannot join.

What’s your biggest work/career mistake and what did you learn from it?

Not specialising early enough and then, when I did, choosing a specialism whose major work provider moved from London and started instructing local counsel.

What’s the most exciting deal/case you’ve worked on and why?

Prosecuting a professor of paediatrics for accusing a man of murdering his children on the basis of his watching a TV show. The media interest was so intense I was followed by a TV crew into a cafe where I was filmed buying a bacon sandwich.

If you were stranded on a desert island what two luxury items would you take?

A fly-fishing rod and my wife.

If a movie was being made about your life, which actor would play you and why?

Johnny Depp, as he gives every impression of enjoying life and its vicissitudes.

Tell us two truths and one lie about yourself (in any order)

I worked in advertising with Salman Rushdie; I’m building an eco-house in a wood; I kept a yacht in Greece.