By Paul Taylor
IT is one of the perils of Marilyn Stowe’s job that she has awkward encounters with people she has, in the strictly legal sense, taken to the cleaners.

For instance, there was the day she was about to undergo an operation, met the anaesthetist and realised to her horror that she had just represented his wife in their divorce.

“I said `Hello, am I going to recover from this operation?’,” she recalls. Luckily, the two went on to become firm friends.

And there were the uncomfortable moments in a Leeds gym when she was recognised by prospective clients or by the bitter ex-spouses against whom she had acted.

“People were either coming up to me and saying `Can I just ask you a question?’ or saying (grimly) `It’s her’. It was awful so I left,” she says.

It was a public relations man, the disgruntled husband of a former client, who first referred to Stowe as `The Barracuda’.

“I was quite impressed really,” she says, happily embracing this free bit of PR. “I’ve been called a lot worse.”

In truth, the Barracuda tag does not fit.

Down-to-earth

Softly-spoken, down-to-earth and, as other journalists have observed, with a look of Celine Dion about her, Marilyn Stowe is a long way from the power-suited harridan that nickname suggests.

To read the rest of the interview, click here.

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