People and Business: Elevated

YESTERDAY was also Maundy Thursday, when the Queen hands out alms to the poor and silk to the barristers.

It is the one day of the year when she elevates a list of barristers to the status of Queen's Counsel, which means they can put "QC" after their name and charge even more for their services.

Warmest congratulations then to Mark Phillips, an insolvency specialist at Michael Crystal's chambers in Gray's Inn, who was made a QC yesterday.

A colleague of Mr Phillips tells me he is a "former racing driver and total petrol-head."

Mr Phillips is famous for a short speech he made at a legal conference on the efficacy or otherwise of the Insolvency Act 1986. Apparently he said he was driving to work recently when he "looked down at the prancing horse on my steering wheel and thought, `it's [the Act's] done alright for me'."

The prancing horse is the symbol of a Ferrari.

E-mail: j.willcock@independent.co.uk

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