THERE must be something strange in the water in Monaco. What on earth would possess Philip Green’s wife, “Lady” Tina Green, to call Jeremy Clarkson and give him an earful for making a harmless crack about knighthoods?

This was the gag Clarkson made while presenting The Who’s Roger Daltrey with an award at a music industry bash: “They’ve given knighthoods to Philip Green, Fred the Shred, Jimmy Savile and then Roger’s sitting down there with a CBE. I mean, come on.”

A bit of fun and considering the size of the BHS pension scandal — there’s a hole anywhere between £350million to £500million — and you would have thought “Lady” Green, a tax exile, would let it go.

Instead she tracked down his mobile, called him up and gave him a gobload for linking her upstanding husband with shamed RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin (he was stripped of his knighthood when the bank effectively went bust) and Sir Jimmy Savile (a 50-year paedophile who abused both sexes).

As she floats around the Med for months on end in her £100million yacht, clearly “Lady” Green has no idea how seriously this country views her husband’s neat trick of flogging BHS to a bankrupt with no retail experience so he could avoid his legal obligation to BHS pensioners.

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That little ploy has blown up in Mr Green’s face, although following massive pressure from the Pensions Regulator it looks now as though he will cough up the £350million to fill that shortfall.

Had he done so in the beginning he would not have faced the barrage of global criticism of his devious corporate actions aided by the lawyers Olswang, the accountants Grant Thornton and the rest of the money-grabbing charlatans he employed.

When he meets his maker he won’t be remembered for being a fine businessman, a big giver to charity, but instead for a pensions scam that didn’t work.

By shouting at Clarkson it’s clear “Lady” Green still hasn’t learned where the line is either. Perhaps it’s in a different place in Monaco.

PS. Watching the BBC’s fabulous Planet Earth II and the snakes in hot pursuit of the baby iguanas, I couldn’t help thinking if the Greens tire of Monaco they might feel well at home on the Galapagos Islands. They’d have a lot in common with the snakes.

Ed has a cha cha chance of winning

LOVED Ed Balls’ Gangnam-style salsa and loved you for not sending him home.

Do you realise that if you had a £5 accumulator on Leicester City winning the Premier League, Brexit, Trump and Ed Balls (100-1) to win Strictly Come Dancing you would have a chance of winning £1.2billion – plus the joy of wiping out William Hill. So what stopped you?

Help for Omran's rescuers

AFTER a few bumps in the road I have finally set up a Just Giving page for the print of Omran, the five-year-old Aleppo boy who was photographed looking so bewildered in the back of an ambulance after his home was bombed by the Russians.

You may remember I had the artist Jolyon Madden create his take on that photo. His work was so transfixing I thought I would share it with you in my column. This led to 80 readers wanting a print.

With each print costing £11.50 (exc VAT) plus post and packaging, I thought I should charge £35, raising around £1,700 for Omran and his family. The hitch is that Omran’s father doesn’t appear to want charity or any of the global help offered since that photo appeared.

He doesn’t explain why but there have been some dark mutterings in the online world.

Nevertheless, children like Omran are being pulled out of the Syrian rubble every day so I intend to send the money to the White Helmets, who do great work after the bombs have done such damage.

For the 80 who would like the print, simply go on justgiving.com/crowdfunding/Omran make the £35 donation and don’t forget to give your address so we know where to send the print.

Car insurance scam

WATCH out for this kind of car insurance scam. Column reader Terry Flashman had only been with Dial Direct for a year when he received a renewal quote for his Vauxhall Zafira for a staggering £1,387. There was no explanation for the huge jump.

So Terry, from Northolt, Middx, went on my price comparison site A Spokesman Said and switched to Kwik-Fit for £373, saving over £1,000 and telling his old insurers: “You must think I’m stupid.”
Same with Geoff Whitlock, who didn’t go through me but took my advice and switched from Saga at £686 to Legal and General at £166.21, saving over £500.
Love those saving stories. Pleasesend them to [email protected].

Will Trump survive?

THERE is much talk of Donald Trump needing extra security to avoid the assassin’s bullet but having looked at his lifestyle, I would be amazed if he makes four years in the White House.

He loves his fried chicken and McDonald’s, saying they are less demanding of his time but also “safer”, as he is a germophobe who dislikes shaking hands, prefers to drink through a straw, eats pizza with a fork and has someone else press the lift button. That will be Ed Miliband’s next job.

He is said to consider baldness a character weakness so it’s clear I will never make Chief of Staff at the White House.

Finally he is gym averse and says: “All my friends who work out all the time are going for knee and hip replacements.” Rab Butler, a Conservative politican in the Sixties, had the same view, saying the only exercise he ever got was climbing hospital stairs for colleagues who had been exercising.

Trump only sleeps two to fours a night and believes that gives him an edge.

Put that lot together and with him turning 70 you can’t believe he will make old bones.

Well, perhaps old chicken bones.

Give it to us straight, Gary

PUZZLED that Gary Lineker, below, hasn’t cleared up the suggestion (last Monday’s column) that he may not write his own tweets but pays somebody to do it for him.

His use of the word dystopian first made me suspicious. In his world, Dystopia is more likely to be the name of an Albanian centre-half. There’s no shame in hiring a tweeter but I think it only fair to his five million Twitter followers he should come clean.
After all, his fans may look at the tweets in a different way if he/she was a Corbyn supporter for instance and had a political axe to grind. Surely not.

No choice for ill George

I HAVE received a moving email from window cleaner Peter Bryant, upset at the court’s decision to force the NHS to fund HIV pills, with the cost inevitably affecting the medical support for people with life-threatening illnesses: “My son George has cystic fibrosis and I would rip out my own lungs and give them to him if I could, but he was born with this evil condition and I have to sit and watch him and feel helpless.

“If people want to play Russian roulette with their lives by having unprotected sex that’s up to them, but my son doesn’t have a choice.

“The NHS has been fantastic with George and I’m so angry that he may suffer because someone can’t put a condom on or even say no.”

Peter is 48 and from Ashford, in Kent.

His son George is 20 years old and his cystic fibrosis was first diagnosed when 22 months old.

As Peter says: “You have a choice to avoid HIV. George and thousands of others didn’t.”

Good point.

Punbelievable

CAFÉ in Rotherham – Dark Side Of The Spoon.

Chinese in Baildon, West Yorks – Wok This Way.
Shoe shop in Cardiff – Brogue Trader.
Men’s hairdresser down a narrow lane in Shrewsbury – Alley Barbers.
Cycle shop in Cardiff – Muddy Bums.Written on the side of effluent waste truck in Rotherham – Inter S**tty.
On the side of a plumber’s van on the A50 in Derbyshire – Dwayne Pipe.
Ad outside café in Cardiff – The bigger you are the harder you are to kidnap. You stay safe, eat cake.
Keep them punnies rolling in to kelvin@ the-sun.co.uk.

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