Over the top?

2. A football fan who was given a banning order after invading the pitch at a Dundee United game says his sentence is a "total joke."

Barry McHugh was barred from every football ground in the UK for three years and given 110 hours of community service at Dundee Sheriff Court after admitting running on to the Tannadice field during a Europa League tie with Dinamo Moscow in August.

The 26-year-old said the sentence was "way over the top."

He said: "I'd had a lot to drink that day, but everything that's happened since then has just been a total joke.

"It's been blown way out of proportion. The banning order is way over the top."

McHugh added that he was "gutted" to be banned from the club he had supported for years.

He said: "Of course I'm gutted, that goes without saying. I just have to get on with it.

"It's been mortifying for me, seeing big pictures in the paper and everything."

- TheCourier.co.uk, December 29, 2012.

3. From his own experience of going to court about once a month as a McKenzie friend – or lay assistant to a litigant – O'Connor knows the situation of those caught up in such cases has been made harder by legal-aid cuts. When he says the result is a "blood bath … wholly out of control … it's legalised cage fighting for parents", his choice of words may be over the top – but even those who reject his emphasis on fathers as victims agree he has a point.

"We've had so many people coming to us, this Siberia of the broken, people who are clinging by their fingertips to the edge of humanity," he says. But it was last year's suicide by the actor Robin Williams that made up his mind to act.

"I loved Robin Williams, if I was down I'd put a DVD on, he used to joke about things that had meaning for me and he really lifted me in my darker moments," he says. "When he died, my son Archie said we've got to watch Mrs Doubtfire. I know it's a trashy comedy but there are some profound bits where he talks about his love for his children and I felt I've got to start doing something more meaningful. I'm lucky, I've got a nice day job but without it I'd struggle. From my experience, I know there is very little support out there."