Osborne is perfect for Joan’s dynasty
THE saddest revelation of the week is that Joan Collins doesn’t consider herself rich because she lacks “f*** you money”.
Which came as a shock on many levels. Surely with a career in which she has demeaned herself in dozens of sleazy roles ever since The Stud, she’s fine for that kind of money? Surely, being 83, and owning homes in New York, LA, London and France, plus an estimated wealth of £24million, she has enough dosh to tell anyone, including God, to eff off ? But, sadly no. Such are Joan’s lifestyle demands that she needs to keep constantly accruing wealth to keep her wigs above water. F*** you money (FU£) is not something most of us understand. The closest I got to having it was being on the dole many years ago, finding a tenner, telling myself I should save it, then thinking “sod that, tonight the world is mine” and blowing it in an off-licence. Or hearing Viv Nicholson win £152,000 on the Pools and saying she was going to “spend, spend, spend” it. But that was then. Today, at a time when FTSE 100 bosses aren’t happy unless they’re taking home 1,000 times more than the average worker, you can’t truly separate yourself from the plebs unless you reek of FU£. That’s no doubt why Google, Amazon and Starbucks pay as little tax as a 90-year-old widow on a war pension. So when they meet up they can compare tax bills and see who fiddled the most FU£. Or why Tony and Cherie Blair built a property empire, so anyone who reminds them of having to cadge holiday villas off Cliff Richard and the Bee Gees is shown one of their 42 homes on an iPhone and told FU. Joan Collins obviously fears she’ll never be in that position so, being a national treasure, we need to help her.
By finding her a sixth husband who is rolling in FU£.
How about Mike Ashley, who famously threw fistfuls of £50 notes into a tray in front of minimum wage workers as he went through Sports Direct security?
Or one of the merry princes of Windsor, who are paid a fortune not to work and whose family firm (otherwise known as FU inc) asked taxpayers for £369million on Children In Need day to tart up Buckingham Palace?
What about Richard Branson, who jets off to his Caribbean tax haven leaving thousands of peak-time rail customers standing next to blocked toilets because his rail company hasn’t provided enough seats?
Or Philip Green who, after stalling for a year to pay back pension money to sacked BHS workers, finally decided to toss them £363million of FU£ without denting his fortune?
All are eligible beaus for Joanie, but none surely compares to George Osborne, who has just declared his latest money-spinning wheeze, earning £650,000 a year for working one day a week for a US finance firm.
It means, along with his MP’s salary, £786,450 from speeches, £120,212 for academic work, plus rental income and shares from the family business, the former chancellor is on course to bank more than £1.5million this year.
And he slyly registered his latest moneyspinner on Budget Day, hoping it would be lost in the coverage of his successor carrying on his policies of slashing benefits to the poorest while cutting taxes to big businesses.
Now there, Joanie, is a man truly making heaps of money on the back of saying FU to the people who most need it
He’s also, like you, a lifelong Tory, so it’s a marriage made in heaven.
What are you waiting for, darling?
Joan has to constantly accrue cash to keep wigs above water