Media Release : Death of Australia’s Legal Agony Aunt celebrated by a book of his selected letters

Media Release                                                                        8 March 2016

Death of Australia’s Legal Agony Aunt celebrated by a book of his selected letters

The legal profession is mourning the unexpected passing of Queensland based Agony Aunt, John Fytit (Pronounced “Fight it” and not “Fit it”), aged 51.

Readers of his international legal advice column will have followed Fytit’s journey from embittered sole practitioner to liberated and unrestrained legal advisor.

“He was variously known as a Legal Agony Aunt, and Legal Agony Ombudsman, his ambition to be a Legal Agony Commissioner was cut short. His thirty years’ experience in legal misfortunes equipped him to give the public the legal advice they truly desired” said one Law Society President.

Concern has been expressed at the hurried publication of his selected letters entitled “I’ll have The Law On You”. A spokesman for his publisher, Brief Books, said “This is the first major edition of John Fytit’s works and is as close as we will come to the autobiography that he never wrote. We wanted to get it out before the funeral”.

Fytit guided clients in dealing with their lawyers. For instance, on scruffiness, he advised “I have seen cases lost for the want of a trouser press. Tell your lawyer that you do not expect Beau Brummel, but to get a grip”.

Lawyer Paul Brennan recalls “In the early years, Fytit’s outbursts against Ombudsmen were widely reported but probably no more than professional jealousy on his part. Ombudsmen found Fytit’s approach amusing but lacking bureaucratic rigour. It was only when Scandinavian governments started to bypass Ombudsmen and refer matters directly to Fytit that Ombudsmen resolved to act. We are not sure what happened after that”.

He leaves his Sunshine Coast legal practice to his grateful wife, also a lawyer.

About the book: “I’ll have The Law On You.”

“In my blog http://www.101reasonstokillallthelawyers.com/ , I wrote a legal Agony Aunt column under the name of my main cartoon character, John Fytit. This year, I decided to kill him off, I think he would have preferred to go first. This is a book of his selected letters” says Paul Brennan.

Paul Brennan’s books are available at http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Brennan/e/B001KMQFEC

About Brief Books https://www.facebook.com/brieflaw/

I set up Brief Books because I wanted to write law books that people including lawyers would have the satisfaction of reading cover to cover. I was prepared to take the risk that they would discover that my books were total rubbish as opposed to traditional law books where they could never be sure. This new approach called for law books to be either shorter or more interesting. 

I hope that other legal authors will find this brief and short (“BS”) approach to law suits them too. By cutting a few hundred pages from their titles, they too will find their law books easier to carry around and introduce into conversations.

One disappointment is that the second-hand market in short law books can be challlenging. On one occasion, I happened to be in Dymocks in Sydney and on requesting my own book (posing as a discerning reader) I was told, “You are in luck, they are now fifty per cent off.”

Paul Brennan

About John Fytit

John Fytit is the name of the central cartoon character in Law & Disorder cartoons that started in Hong Kong in 1992. He was from the fictitious Hong Kong firm Fytit & Loos (pronounced “Fight it and Lose”). A very unsuccessful name as people read “Fytit” as “Fit it”.

About Paul Brennan

Paul Brennan was born in London. He has worked in the law in various countries including the UK, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia.

He is in practice with his wife Diane on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. They have four children.

For media enquiries, email paul.brennan@brennanlaw.com.au or call Paul Brennan direct on 0400 150 711 or his office on 617 5438 8199.