SELFISH SERVICE WORRY Calling Phil: Pay up now

It’s an open and shut case, Taylor

I DASHED into my corner shop for a paper the other morning, running late for work. And I stood, tutting impatiently, as an old lady chatted with the friendly assistant about the hot weather and local bus diversions. But reading the paper later I RARELY listen to Radio 2 or Jeremy Vine’s phone-in show. But it must be really, really good.

Because the 52-year-old broadcaster gets paid £ 700,000 a year to take listeners’ calls, chat about current affairs and play tunes each weekday.

We discovered this when the BBC was forced to reveal what they pay “top talent” – mostly white men who earn far more than women in similar roles.

The salaries have renewed anger at Britain’s gender pay gap, because women and men doing the same job should obviously earn the same.

Just like the ambulance call handlers I was honoured to meet this week.

They’re top talented professionals too, and their disgracefully LOW salaries should outrage all of us.

The average UK salary is £26,500. But they get £ 18,000 a year to take phone calls from the sick, injured, dying and desperate, to talk to them with confidence and compassion, to save lives 24/7.

You’ll see some of the emergency medical dispatchers from the South Western Ambulance Service on the new series of Channel 4’ s 999: What’s Your Emergency?

You’ll hear how they calm those in fear and agony, find out what’s happened and send highly trained paramedics to help.

And you’ll feel massive respect for their dedication – and disgust at the levels of vile abuse they endure in a job that gets harder every day.

Calls to 999 are soaring. Sometimes because genu inely sick people can’t get to see their GP, but also because that day I felt terrible. Because a report from the Association of Convenience Stores reveals one in five local shops have recently “upgraded” to self-service checkouts and are sacking staff to cut costs. Yes, I know they need to compete with supermarkets more and moreore idiots think an emergency is losingosing a toenail or the TV remote, orr their way home after 15 pints of f Guinness!

Yet a TUC C study shows ambulance workerskers are the hardest hit by Tory cuts and the 1 per cent public sector pay cap. Many are more than £6,000 00 worse off in real terms than seven en years ago.

I listened in n to some of their harrowing calls – one took 138 calls in a single 12-hour our shift – and felt drained after 45 5 minutes.

There are upliftinglifting moments too – when they help resuscitate patients or deliver ver a baby.

But t some admit they have sleepless leepless nights over folk they hey couldn’t save – a manan who “drowned in his s own blood”, a s c hoolboyo l boy f ound hanged,ed, a cot death baby.

I’m m sure Jeremy Vine shares my admirationn for our brilliant emergency services.ices. And it’s not his fault we live in a society that rewards celebritiesities and entertainers more thanhan unsung heroes handling real eal life and death dramas.

But I DO blame Tory politicians – like ke millionaire Chancellor Philip ip Hammond, who believes public sector workers are overpaiderpaid and refuses to lift the he pay cap.

Because he has the power to narrow w – even by a fraction n – the outrageous payay gap that allows one ne call handler to get £700,000 and another nother just £18,000. I RECENTLY met Jimmy Osmond who told me how he and his toothsome siblings escaped their hysterical fans at the height of Osmondmania in 1972.

Donny and the older lads got smuggled in and out of hotels in a bread van – but roadies threw Little Jimmy, then aged nine, into a suitcase and carted him around.

Which is why I totally believe Taylor and online shopping. But what a tragedy it will be if we, a so-called nation of shopkeepers, turn our corner shops into cold, clinical and impersonal places. And not places where lonely old folk can have a chat over the till and a bit of basic human interaction. Swift’s fans who claimed burly aides smuggled her out of her New York flat in a big trunk this week, pictured left.

She’s a skinny minnie and probably weighs less than the suitcase I’ll be carting around Spain for two weeks.

And as actor and former lover Tom Hiddleston found out last year, Taylor’s colourful love life means she definitely comes with baggage.