Hey, Coogan, get down off that moral high ground!

Steve Coogan is the latest rich celebrity to use the furlough scheme for his own ends. the comedian, who has a personal fortune of around £ 10 million, has furloughed the gardener and housekeeper at his £4 million country home in Sussex.

His gardener and housekeeper! Surely this is not what chancellor Rishi Sunak had in mind when he announced the scheme at the beginning of the pandemic?

the government prioritised protecting jobs and incomes — and so far the furlough scheme has been largely effective. However, we all know it can’t go on for ever, and is it right that rich people such as Coogan should use taxpayers’ money rather than their own to pay their domestic staff? Particularly if they could well afford to do so themselves? no it is not. It’s outrageous. victoria Beckham did initially use the furlough scheme for her fashion business, then changed her mind under a storm of criticism. Stella McCartney, Rick Stein, Richard Branson and Philip green have all applied for their staff to be furloughed, despite having sizeable personal fortunes.

this all pales in comparison to the Hinduja brothers. their wealth (around £20 billion) makes them the richest men in Britain, yet they too are using the scheme to pay some of the 360 employees at a Yorkshire bus firm they own.

and could anything be more morally bankrupt than the behaviour of Lib Dem frontbencher Lord Fox, who furloughed himself despite having a £100,000 cash pot in his company and claiming the House of Lords allowance during lockdown?

Not all furlough cases are without merit. Large firms with shareholders, thousands of employees and knee-buckling pension pots could and would drain the reserves of any millionaire very quickly.

and the principle behind the furlough scheme is to stop major businesses collapsing and leaving millions unemployed, with the calamitous knock- on effect that would bring to suppliers and communities. Yet some manage. Simon Cowell and Duncan Bannatyne are among those moguls paying the payroll out of their own pockets. James timpson of the timpson group has also dipped into his own pocket, topping up the 80 per cent furlough so his staff are still earning 100 per cent full pay. It is costing him £500,000 a week.

‘It’s worth every penny to help our colleagues and their families through some tough times,’ he said this week. His generous attitude is not one shared by Coogan, who is the worst kind of champagne socialist, one who has often used his celebrity to campaign for Labour. He even supported Jeremy Corbyn, which takes party loyalty to foolhardy extremes.

For decades, Coogan has presented himself as an absolute darling of the Left; the kind of raging lefty who cares more, understands more, feels more and simply knows more than you do.

During the election last year, from his entrenched position on the moral high ground, Coogan was one of the luvvies who urged the electorate to vote tactically to oust the Conservatives — well that went well, darlings! He also went on national tv to describe Conservative voters as ‘ill-informed and ignorant’, which was a bit rude, to say the least. In the same Channel 4 interview he suggested that the tories deliberately underfunded schools in order to win votes from badly educated people.

His sneering dismissal of those who disagree with his political views is painful to witness, but he now exposes himself as a hypocrite, too; one who is happy to embrace Conservative policies if they happen to suit his pocket.

Coogan recently starred in the film greed, which was loosely based on the life of Philip green. In interviews to support the film, the star droned on about ‘ the huge imbalance between the rich and the poor’, giving the impression it was something he cared about.

In his 2015 autobiography easily Distracted, he wrote about how he was brought up to be ‘respectable, to be kind to people, to take personal pride by contributing to society in a traditional way’.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, he wants you and me to fund the wages of george the gardener and Mrs Hughes the Housekeeper in his own private Downton abbey.

the public are right to be furious about this, particularly when they have been making so many sacrifices themselves, both personally and financially. It seems morally wrong, in many cases, to further burden the British taxpayer.

all those mentioned here are no doubt legally entitled to use the furlough system — but does that mean that they should?

Some are calling for the scheme to be means tested, but that seems an unworkable target.

Instead, people like Steve Coogan should have the bloody good sense just to pay up themselves.

and how very telling it is that they don’t.