The region already faces the dismal prospect of millions of migrant workers being sent home as their once-tigerish employers cut back. Our Business pages report that George Soros, the seer of Wall Street, fears that the Asian slump may be the prelude to world deflation and depression. At the moment it is impossible to say where the downward spiral in the Far East will be arrested. The rest of the world has escaped relatively lightly so far, though investors in Asian growth funds might not think so.

Some Western consumers are looking forward to cheaper electronic goods and holidays in Bali that cost less than a fortnight in Spain. (It was perhaps significant that when Popplewell saw a courtroom artist's drawing of himself and Carman on Sky TV, he asked her to draw him another sketch as a memento of the trial, but specified: "The same as last time, but without George Carman in it".)Carman's opponents are often quick to criticise his technique. It will be a different matter, however, if seven years of economic stagnation in Japan turns into outright depression, or if a nuclear-armed China, where the masses have been bought off with nationalistic slogans and better living conditions as a substitute for political freedoms, suffers a sudden reversal. The presence on these delegations of members of the National Security Council demonstrates Washington's fear that grave political instability might result as East Asia's nouveaux riches see their wealth disappear. Whatever the outcome, it's pretty certain we can expect the usual forensic fireworks And watch out for those rabbits.. WHEN President Clinton gets on the telephone to President Suharto of Indonesia, urging him to reform his country's economy, it is clear that the rest of the world has cause to worry about the crisis in East Asia's "tiger economies".

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the deputy US Treasury secretary and a host of other American officials are on their way to the region, seeking to prevent the turmoil in currency, stock and debt markets getting out of control. So it could be that the Branson case, which is expected to last for three or four weeks, will be something of an acid test as to whether the old magic is still there. He confesses he was "gobsmacked" by Carman's ability to demonstrate photographic recall of a mass of information during a cross-examination which lasted several days and to switch effortlessly from talking about the regulatory functions of the IBA to questioning a witness on the specifics of an arms deal in the late Seventies.It's fair to say that until crucial documents were discovered at the last minute (another rabbit out of the hat from George), several aspects of the Aitken case were looking a bit grim for Carman. If you find yourself sitting next to him at dinner you'll find him a little shy but good fun, although it's unlikely his conversation will stray far from the law. He doesn't list any recreations in Who's Who, but he's a skilled pianist who can play by ear.Recently there have been whisperings that the Carman phenomenon may be faltering, that perhaps George isn't the power he used to be That's not the case as far as Alan Rusbridger is concerned. He's been married and divorced three times and has a son from his second marriage He once commented that "barristers make bad husbands".

Within 10 minutes, he said, he would have the third juror from the left on the back row in tears. Naturally the hacks were watching closely with their stopwatches out, so the story goes, and sure enough, after nine minutes and 30 seconds, the aforementioned juror wiped a tear from her eye. Carman paused for a glass of water, turned round, winked at the press bench and carried on.Outside the courtroom, Carman's life is as blameless as it is somehow dull. "He doesn't amount to much more than his cuttings", is how one acquaintance puts it He lives alone in a five-bedroomed house in Wimbledon. He's happy to accept a drink from an interested hack and during a case he'll often ask a passing reporter how he thinks it's going. There's even a story, possibly apocryphal, that during the case in which Carman successfully defended Dr Leonard Arthur, a paediatrician charged with murder after prescribing "nursing care only" for a Downs Syndrome baby, he approached the assembled courtroom hacks before his closing speech and made a small wager with them. "He's had several successes for newspapers," says Gray, "and if one dare say it, newspapers are always quite keen on contemplating their own navels and I think they give him a good lashing of publicity for that reason."IT'S certainly true that Carman is very journo-friendly.

The "Carman phenomenon" had begun."There was a phase he went through when he seemed to win all the high- profile libel cases," says the legal writer quoted above when asked to explain the Carman phenomenon. "I don't think for a moment he's got the best record but he just happens to have been in the ones that got a lot of publicity. It was only in the early Nineties that Carman began to be known for his libel work and in a short space of time he would become almost as celebrated as many of his clients. He suddenly became the fashionable person to get."Charles Gray describes the Carman phenomenon as "very odd" and finds its possible explanation in the nature of some of his clients. "It seemed to me the jury were mesmerised," Napley recalled in his memoirs.After the Thorpe victory, more high-profile criminal cases followed.