Dwarf Rooney tramp gives his pennies to orphans
MEANWHILE HIS MILLIONAIRE FOOTBALLER DOUBLE SLAMS PAY CUT CALLS AS ‘A DISGRACE’
WAYNE Rooney’s dwarf double has shamed professional footballers by pledging to donate a THIRD of all his income to the needy affected by the coronavirus emergency.
Skint Tom Harper – who lived for a time in a Tesco bottle bin – has snatched the moral high ground by declaring: “I may not be able to give a lot but I’m giving what I can.”
Tom’s stand is in complete contrast to the full- sized Wayne Rooney, who earlier this month said footballers were being treated as “scapegoats” after it was suggested they take a 30 per cent pay cut.
Three- foot- six- inch Tom said: “I agree with Wayne that footballers were perhaps unfairly being targeted by calls for a pay cut – I don’t see a similar call made about shadowy international money men, for example.
“But it’s important for me to show that handing over a substantial part of your pay is not impossible.
“I make a few pennies a day by dancing around my hat for passers- by. Obviously, there are fewer people around these days so my income has fallen substantially.
“But, even so, I’ve decided to hand over a third of what I get to the needy, those who are really struggling with this whole virus thing.
Lucky
“You might not think it to look at me but I consider myself lucky. I have my health, my hat and my imaginary dog, Hercules.
“I don’t lead an extravagant lifestyle so handing over a third of my income is not that hard. And it nourishes me spiritually. That’s what’s important.”
Earlier this month Wayne Rooney criticised both the Government and the Premier League for placing the nation’s top footballers in a “no- win situation” over the issue of pay cuts, branding their interventions “a disgrace”.
The former England captain, now playing in the Championship with Derby, penned an impassioned column in The Sunday Times in which he claimed his fellow professionals were being lined up as “easy targets” in the wider response to the coronavirus crisis.
After Health Secretary Matt Hancock, called for players to take a cut, Rooney wrote: “If the Government approached me to help support nurses financially or buy ventilators I’d be proud to do so – as long as I knew where the money was going.
“I’m in a position where I could give something up. Not every footballer is in the same position. Yet suddenly the whole profession has been put on the spot with a demand for 30 per cent pay cuts across the board. Why are footballers suddenly the scapegoats?”