Known variously by friends, clients and opponents as "Gorgeous George", "the great defender" and "the silver fox", George Carman was the defence counsel everyone wanted to have on their side. In his turn he loved the publicity that his cases - frequently defences of the rich, the famous and the glamorous - brought him personally.

To a remarkable degree he combined great forensic skills with an instinctive grasp of the psychology of the courtroom, in the trad- ition of a long line of distinguished defence advocates. Above all, he possessed a skill surprisingly rare among lawyers who appear before juries: he spoke in layman's terms without seeming to condescend. He had an unerring instinct for keeping steadily before the court those points which, from a jury's point of view, were at the heart of the case. Thus, in criminal trials and libel cases alike, his services were much in demand - among those who could afford them.

Preparing a case, Carman always found an image or phrase to plant in the minds of the court. During one, in which he defended Channel 4, that image was the white posterior of the South African neo-Nazi, Eugene Terre'Blanche, seen through a keyhole bobbing up and down between the knees of the plaintiff, the South African journalist Jani Allan, who was suing the channel over allegations that she had had an affair with the white supremacist. In another case, the image was of the EastEnders actress Gillian Taylforth simulating oral sex on a home video, with a large sausage and a wine bottle, during an action she unsuccessfully brought against The Sun newspaper.

He was not afraid to be unashamedly populist, drawing on the imagery of advertising hoardings and the language of television and radio soundbites whenever it suited his purpose. Thus, of the former politician David Mellor he memorably told a court that he had "behaved like an ostrich and put his head in the sand, thereby exposing his thinking parts"; while of Neil Hamilton, during his courtroom battle with Mohamed Al Fayed, he remarked to the jury, in allusion to five-course meals allegedly taken at the Ritz in Paris: "No Big Macs or chicken nuggets, ladies and gentlemen."

Not for nothing did a rival barrister describe Carman as "master of the wink-wink, nudge-nudge".

But his approach was not simplistic. However complex the brief, Carman always mastered it. In his early years, he rehearsed before a mirror, which certainly paid off. He was known to make opening speeches that lasted 45 minutes, with virtually no reference to notes.

George Alfred Carman was born in 1929. His father, Alfred George Carman, ran a furniture shop in Blackpool, while his mother, Evelyn, made dresses. George always envied Alfred's "tremendous inner peace and tranquillity", but he took after Evelyn, who was more ambitious. One early success was making the first XV rugby team at school, despite his tiny frame (Carman never grew taller than 5 ft 3in).

As a youth, Carman wanted to become a priest, and at 14 he joined Upholland College, a seminary in Lancashire. Roman Catholics in the North West of England should be glad he changed his mind two years later, saving them from what might have been lethal interrogations in the confessional.

Much later, Carman explained why he left the seminary: "I discovered I like women." He was to marry three of them.

Carman took a first in law, and eliminated his Lancashire accent, at Balliol College, Oxford. At 23, he was called to the Bar. After a short spell in London, he moved back to the north west. He made no great mark at first: during his fourth year on the Northern Circuit, Carman earned no more than a Manchester bus driver. An alternative career presented itself: he attempted to become a Conservative parliamentary candidate, but after a few setbacks he gave up.

His first wife, Ursula, daughter of a local Tory grandee, stuck by him. Too proud to ask for help from their parents, they pawned her engagement ring, and sold other heirlooms. They sold their bungalow (at a loss). After moving into the top half of a house in Wilmslow, they decided to separate. Carman later wrote Ursula out of history by listing only his second and third wives in Who's Who.

Carman's first headline-grabbing case came in 1972, a year after he took silk. He successfully defended the owner of a rollercoaster at Battersea Fun Fair charged with manslaughter after five children died on his ride. Carman's performance impressed a leading solicitor, Sir David Napley, who instructed him a few years later to defend the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe against a charge of conspiracy to murder. After winning for Thorpe at the Old Bailey, Carman never looked back.