Former British Home Stores (BHS) owner Sir Philip Green has announced that he will give his entire worldly goods to charity and that he plans to live “au naturel” in a small copse of gorse bushes on the South Downs.
The shock announcement came only hours after Sir Philip agreed to pay £363 million of his own money into the BHS pension fund which had a shortfall of £571 million after the company went bankrupt in 2015 following its sale by Green to “a mate” for £1.
Sir Phiddle subsequently tried to avoid giving evidence at a parliamentary enquiry, leading to him being dubbed “Sir Shifty” by the tabloid press and calls for him to be stripped of his knighthood.
Speaking to the Rochdale herald Sir Shitty confirmed that it had been his humbling before parliament that had ultimately led to his decision to pay more than half the money missing from the pension fund “out of his own pocket”.
“As my chauffeur took the roller out of parliament square I saw a couple of homeless people begging by Westminster bridge. It suddenly dawned on me how hard life must be for those unfortunate enough not to have knighthoods, retail empires, tax avoidance scams and the unwavering sycophantic support of the Daily Mail,” he said.
“Call it a Damascene conversion, but it was then I realised I had to make a change in my life. Never mind the horsehair shirts and enduring penury, from now on it’s nudity and thorns,” he said.
Sir Fillizpockets declined to give details of exactly which charities he would be donating his fortune – estimated to be in excess of £6 billion, to, or what he planned to do with his seventeen luxury yachts and luxury property portfolio.
But he did confirm that he had been touring the south downs looking for copses of suitably prickly gorse in which to follow his planned monastic existence.
However critics allege that Sir Firehydrant’s supposed “Damascene conversion” is little more than another bizarrely complex stunt to avoid paying tax on his humungous fortune made from selling shit fashion-wear manufactured by close-to-slave labour in south Asian sweatshops to brain dead British teenagers.
“He calls it a thorn bush, we say it’s actually a hedge fund, complete with five star hotel accommodation,” quipped Dave Spart of Anti Capitalist Action.
“And as for paying £363 million “of his own money” into the BHS pension fund – I wonder do his stores offer the same flexible interpretation of “ownership” to shoplifters,” he asked.
A spokesman for the South Downs national park confirmed that the park authority would never support the construction of a five star hotel within the park boundaries and would also not condone former retail tycoons living naked within its borders.
“But then gorse is naturally ‘spinose’, so the addition of one more prick shouldn’t cause problems as long as it isn’t allowed to breed with the local fauna,” he said, explaining that the authority had plans to reintroduce wild boar to the park.
“Sir Fiddle will need to be kept carefully ring-fenced. the last thing we want is a capitalist pig contaminating the natural gene pool, no matter how much of a bore he is” he said.
