Almost everyone will have seen this morning's news that a charming chap in Southampton has effectively been allowed to excuse himself from jury service - an almost impossible task - by telling the judge that he's not just a homophobe, but a racist too. Excellent.

A recap for those who've spent the morning deep in due diligence: a juror, selected from the long-list to serve, wrote to the judge, stating that he was a homophobe and a racist, and therefore could not be expected to fairly assist in the prosecution of justice.* And it worked; he's been dropped.

I guess under the circumstances, there's not very much any judge could say. If you tell someone you're a racist and a homophobe, it's a brave person to call your bluff. Actually, I reckon people who happily label themselves racist homophobes as matter of public record (the letter was read out in court) are probably pretty likely to be racist homophobes. There's not much wiggle room for the judge, really. And so the juror was struck off. But not before Judge Gary Burrell threatened him with contempt of court - because he couldn't be sure whether the lovely man was telling the truth. Was he genuinely a racist homophobe? Or was he just pretending to be a racist homophobe to escape jury service?

That latter option sounds pretty nuclear. Can jury service really be that bad? You get paid, don't you? You probably even get sandwiches.

People tell me that jury service is a bind, and I'm sure plenty of us have heard horror stories of unengaged jurors, snap verdicts, deliberate failures to listen to any evident and the like. There is absolutely no way I'd ever want to put myself in front of a panel of twelve of my peers. The general public is an odd mix of Henman Hill and Jeremy Kyle. Chumps. I'm not sure I trust the general public with my fate.

But there's a genuine concern here. I reckon that from tomorrow onwards lots of judges will be getting scrawled notes from jurors, attempting a similar trick to get out of sitting in a courtroom between 10 and 4 for a couple of days. In this case, the guy sounds - despite his racism and homphobia - reasonably coherent. He can, at least, write a sentence (clearly that doesn't excuse homophobic or racist views, but it's a start). All change tomorrow: the notes will read "i h8 [insert racial group] pliss don make me do jurie fanks".


* According to report, his letter said: "I strongly believe that it would be a serious injustice to the legal system to select me for jury service. I hold extreme prejudices against homosexuals and black/foreign people and couldn’t possibly be impartial if either appeared in court. Therefore it would not be in the court’s interest to have me a juror."