Then, after sitting, when the judge looked at the usher and enquired, “Whazzaah?” it was pretty much all downhill.

My shyster might have been the work-experience kid the previous week.

He had one of those little tufts of hair sprouting out between his lip and chin that make it look like he tired easily while shaving so just left that bit; or that he couldn’t afford a labret so kept that spot doing busy-work while it waited.

I was asked if it was true that I’d been selling “Magnifico Cure-all Poteen” and I agreed that I’d sold it online, in Byron Bay and at One Nation Party rallies.

The shyster said, “Don’t answer”, which was, like the labret, a bit late.

The beak said, “What do One Nation rallies and the North Coast have in common?”

And I replied that they shared an aversion to needles and a love of believing everything on the Net, counted to three and pointed to the shyster who, with perfect timing said, “Don’t answer.”

We were getting up a rhythm at last.

The prosecutor started bellowing about my advertising which said that my miracle medicine had cured me personally of leprosy.

I triumphantly pointed to the fact that when I’d had a boil lanced by the quack and asked him if it was leprosy, he’d confirmed that it was “about a chance in a billion” and that sounded like pretty worrying odds to me.

The judge asked if I was using the Belle Gibson defence, work-experience kid chimed in with his entire two word vocabulary and I said, “dunno.”

It sounded like I might get slapped with some infringement of defence copyright by this Belle person so I kept shtum from then on.

We put up our expert witness, elderly Vaucluse grandmother Esther Finkleberg, and the prosecutor failed to either dent her credibility or smooth her frown.

He read the list of ingredients to her, from a bottle of Magnifico: there’s actually only one ingredient but it’s written in Latin, French, English and emoji. 

“That’s chicken stock!” he crowed. “The bottle claims to cure – amongst other things – broken limbs, leprosy, electric shock, and tinnitus! How on earth will chicken soup help?”

At which she paused, lifted her hands, shrugged and gently replied, “It won’t hoit!” which got a small round of applause from the gallery for a perfectly timed Jewish joke.

The beak noted that I’d also raised a motza by selling Magnifico company shares on comefindme.com and asked how stock-holders were going to be paid.

“That’s where the ‘comefindme’ part comes into it m’Lud,” I explained, looking at tufted-one who just woefully shook his head this time – tuckered-out after a hard day no doubt.

His worship said that he was going to retire and consider his verdict: this consisted of sticking a couple of fingers under his wig, scratching his bonce, and saying, “Well, I think you’ve all guessed!”

Naturally, I still sell the occasional bottle of snake oil but it’s strictly cash and face to face.

If you’re strolling by the river this weekend worrying about leprosy, give me a hoy – I’m the bloke in the orange onesies with the big bag of litter.