Dame Emma has a brilliant talent — for making a fool of herself

When I’m relaxing on holiday, it takes a lot to outrage me. But a few days ago in Spain, I was confronted by a German woman who asked how I could live with myself, coming as I did from a country where a third of children were starving and impoverished.

It wasn’t just me who was appalled at this damning accusation about Britain, but my Left-leaning companion, too. he told her it simply wasn’t true and she retorted that she’d found the information ‘on social media’ — as if that proved it was.

My hectoring Frau will have felt vindicated this week when actress emma Thompson — a Dame of the British empire, no less — claimed up to 30 per cent of British children are suffering ‘Dickensian’ poverty and millions are going hungry.

not just hungry, but thirsty, too. She said schools aren’t giving them drinking water — and are even damaging water fountains on purpose — so the kids have to buy bottles of the stuff.

What unadulterated, hand-wringing luvvie tosh. Starving children? not exactly the picture we get from our national obesity crisis. And who really believes water shortage is a genuine problem in our schools? I’ve not heard one mother complain of it. ever.

even if it was, what’s to stop children filling their own bottles at home, like most of us do, and taking them to school? Or is asking the poor waifs to take on a little responsibility for themselves too stressful?

Of course, in so many ways, emma Thompson is a superstar. A peerless actor whose talent has ensured she’s an ambassador for her profession around the world.

She’s also a passionate campaigner — pro-Palestinian, an ambassador for the ActionAid charity, a patron of the Refugee Council. But that should not mean her views can go unchallenged.

Or her actions — not least her hypocrisy in jetting thousands of miles from hollywood, spewing out tonnes of carbon in the process, to join the protests against climate change.

What’s more, she delivers her nonsense with such sanctimony. her ill-informed student politics not only damages Britain — catching the imagination of people like my Frau — it’s also beneath her dignity.

And, in my book, that makes her the most irritating woman in Britain.