George and Amal paid for hotel for neighbours

GEORGE CLOONEY’S bar bills at his local Berkshire watering hole are even larger than first thought, after the actor and his wife Amal bought a £7.5 million mansion in Sonning in 2014.

the couple’s £12 million building works to their home on an island in the thames have been so disruptive that the Clooneys paid for neighbours John and Clare Grove to spend almost a month living in a hotel, the french horn, where riverside suites cost £225 per night.

the Groves lived in a cottage at the end of the Clooneys’ driveway and had to endure a daily stream of HGVS and diggers clogging up the tiny lane outside their home from late 2015.

George — whose wife Amal is expecting twins — said his house renovations were ‘ hell’. the Groves have since left the village.

No wonder the Clooneys’ neighbours needed a stiff drink.

LABOUR’S queen of sanctimony, Harriet Harman, harangued Chancellor George Osborne in 2015 for ‘not doing enough’ to stop tax avoidance. Surprising, then, that she’s pocketed a £3,000 cheque from Vodafone, the company at the centre of a huge tax avoidance controversy. The latest register of MPs’ extra-curricular earnings shows the one-time Labour leader earned her handsome fee for taking part in a debate hosted by Vodafone Group for International Women’s Day. No doubt Harman steered clear of the embarrassment when Vodafone was accused of striking ‘sweetheart’ deals with HMRC to avoid paying a multimillion-pound tax bill. The mobile phone giant’s payment to Harman was made via an agency called Golden Goose PR. Could Harriet’s chickens have come home to roost?