Some classic examples of the polite insult from F E Smith KC:-

• Judge: Are you trying to show contempt for this court, Mr Smith?
  Smith: No, My Lord. I am attempting to conceal it.

• Judge: Have you ever heard of a saying by Bacon — the great Bacon — that youth and discretion are ill-wedded companions?
  Smith: Yes, I have. And have you ever heard of a saying of Bacon — the great Bacon — that a much-talking judge is like an ill-tuned cymbal?

• Smith (to witness): So, you were as drunk as a judge?
  Judge (interjecting): You mean as drunk as a lord?
  Smith: Yes, My Lord.

• Master of the Rolls: Really, Mr Smith, do give this Court credit for some little intelligence.
  Smith: That is the mistake I made in the Court below, My Lord.

• Judge I’ve listened to you for an hour and I’m none wiser.
  Smith: None the wiser, perhaps, my lord, but certainly better informed.

F E Smith went on to become Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (as the 1st Earl of Birkenhead).

Source of quotes:  Wikiquote

“I have learned that it is a mistake for a judge to do anything except sit and stay awake” - Lord Justice Mummery

Picture reblogged from androphilia: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (America) By Yinka Shonibare, 2008

Reginald Grenville Eves (British, 1876-1941) Portrait of Lord Justice Darling, PC
signed and dated ‘R G Eves 1916’ (upper right), oil on canvas
125 x 100cm (49 3/16 x 39 3/8in).

Sold for £1,800 in November 2009 at Bonhams’s, Knightsbridge.

In 1900 the Editor of the Daily Argos was fined £100 for publishing the following article about this Judge:

“…If anyone can imagine Little Tich upholding his dignity upon a point of honour in a public-house, he has a very fair conception of what Mr Justice Darling looked like in warning the Press against the printing of indecent evidence. His diminutive Lordship positively flowed with judicial self-consciousness…No newspaper can exist except upon its merits, a condition from which the Bench, happily for Mr. Justice Darling, is exempt. There is not a journalist in Birmingham who has anything to learn from the impudent little man in horse-hair, a microcosm of conceit and empty-headedness … One is almost sorry that the Lord Chancellor had not another relative to provide for on the day that he selected a new judge from among the larrikins of the law. One of Mr Justice Darling’s biographers states that ‘an eccentric relative left him much money.’ That misguided testator spoiled a successful bus conductor …”.

When imposing the fine, the Lord Chief Justice observed that only his abject apology had saved the journalist from a prison sentence.