An EmBARRassment of Richards

During the week I was asked in a newspaper interview what I would have been if I had not become a solicitor. My answer is unimportant. What is much more significant is what I might have been had I been ………. Richard Barr.
It is a depressing thought for readers of the SOLICITORS JOURNAL that a Google search on the internet revealed no less than 1590 entries under the name "Richard Barr". Google, for those of you who are unfamiliar to these things, is not a kind of bowling action in cricket, but a search engine on the internet. Don't ask me why it is called an engine, as it has no moving parts, but I am sure that the boffins who set up the internet had their reasons.
Normally I am amazed by the breadth of information that is available on any subject under (and for that matter inside and beyond) the sun. The internet is a wonderful tool which all solicitors should use to the full to find experts, facts and materials for cases. Within about 5 minutes I can track down not only the author of an arcane paper on the sex life of the Inner Mongolian purple bumble bee, but also his telephone number, who he is currently sleeping with (when he is not with his bees) and everything he has ever written on the subject. But yesterday the key words were just not yielding anything worthwhile (and mind your own business. I am not going to tell you what I was looking for). I wanted to check that the system was working. Idly I typed in my name and watched as the pages poured forth. How dare so many people in the world use my name!
But it goes to show what I might have been. The following Richard Barrs are real (or as real as anything is in cyberspace), but no relation to me. Honest.
· The sportsman. There are Richard Barrs who are adept as footballers, golfers and a netball coach at a school in Indiana. The athletic member of the family was also well represented in Hawaii: Fourth in the Magic Island Biathlon Open, but the crowning achievement must have been joint number 84 in the 2001 North Super Team Classic Bass Fishing contest (with 3 fish caught weighing 4.76lbs). This was disappointing. I had been placed at number 37 the previous year.
· The arty farty. Some of my namesakes are artistic. One is a designer of 1960s ladies' suits (for good measure I could buy a sample of my work from a dealer for just $195). Another is the originator of the artwork for a full page nightclub advertisement.
· The name dropper. I don’t, but they have (or had) friends in high places: including the Playwright Edward Albee, Orson Welles and Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine.
· Major Richard Barr, the Fire Marshall for the Lawrence-Douglas (Kansas) County Fire Department. There were several accounts of the exploits of this RB, including the time when his own fire engine caught fire at the fire station.
· Hon worshipful and VP. Titles don't stop with fire marshals. There is the Honorable Richard Barr the floodplain administrator in Jefferson County in Oklahoma, and the Mayor of Cook County (wherever that is), as well as Executive Vice President of Rust Tractor Company in Albuquerque New Mexico.
· What is a trebuchet when it's at home? Richard Barr is the co-builder of one - which is used to fire objects as varied as a grand piano, a Hillman car and 2 deceased pigs with parachutes into a field of perplexed sheep in Shropshire.
· Dump bang and screw you. Richard Barrs have varied jobs: the manager of a recycling and waste disposal site, . the owner of Barrs Guns and Machinery in Wyoming (est 1974) and a pawnbroker in Nebraska.
· Brain boxes. Others are, among other things: the presenter of a seminar on kidney imaging at a symposium on Ultrasound contrasts "Bubbles in Radiology: the state of the Art," the co-author of "Minimal Wavelength Assignment in Survivable Mesh Networks", and for that matter the author of "The Socially Conscious Investor: Ethics and Money." Wearing my (his?) hat as an employee of the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research, the author of that enthralling piece: "Enhanced ELF wave generation efficiency using 'O' mode HF heating of the ionosphere: An Instrumental explanation". Dick Barr the dentist also discovered the link between dental plaque and heart problems.
· Barr at the Bar. You would inevitably expect to find my other me's practising law - and they do: as an attorney defending Shaka Sankofa, (on death row) and quoted as saying:
"Responsible citizens, including death penalty advocates, should shudder at the thought of an execution based solely on a two-second view of a stranger's face in the dark."
· Not me guv. There are Richard Barrs I am glad not to be. A court in Canada ordered one of them to refund all monies paid by the Plaintiffs in a horrendous commercial action. Another is on a charge of capital murder in Tennessee.
· Dogs and Donkeys. But if all else fails I can change the direction of my life and become the owner of winning Rottweillers at the Yuma Kennel club or a clown at children’s parties. The last could somehow be combined with the Richard Barr who wanted to buy a spotted donkey from someone in New Hampshire
With such richness available to anyone who carries my name, why waste time being a solicitor in damp old England? Because if I allowed myself to be sucked into a search engine, I might cease to exist altogether, and become the fictional hero in "The Runaways" - a historical novel by Julia Herbert or transmogrify into a mountain named after Richard Barr a retired dairy farmer.
That would cause some problems when I next appear in court: "Your honour I represent the claimant, and the defendant is represented by that thousand metre pile of rock over there: Mount Barr"

This article first appeared in Solicitors Journal in March 2002