Dirty Diary

He was back in the news last week, though, because both he and his old friend Gideon have new jobs. Gideon, you probably don't remember either, used to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which position he was better known as George, the name he adopted aged 13 as “a small act of rebellion”, or just plain old Mr Osborne, if you were his nanny or his butler or his chauffeur. But now Gideon has a job as the editor of a local newspaper – he started last week, turning up for his first day with a briefcase that looked very new and suspiciously empty – and Cameron has begun work as a shepherd. Amazing how the once-mighty land on their feet, isn't it?

To help Cameron with his new profession, he has spent £25,000 on a shepherd's hut and probably about the same again on paint from Farrow & Ball, decorators to the stars. His colours of choice are Mouse's Back (a sort of grey), Old White (speaks for itself, but add a plus sign and you have a good description of the typical Tory party member into the bargain) and something called Clunch. No idea what colour that is, but as it sounds like the noise an egg makes when it hits Nigel Farage. I'm going for yellow.

The hut also has Bakelite light switches and a wood-burning stove. I expect there's room also for a crook or two – insert own, legally-cleared Tory party donor joke here – and when the former Prime Minister isn't using the hut to check his flock of Scottish Blackfaces for sheep scab, he plans to write his memoirs.

I wonder what he'll call them. See Ewe, Boris?

Not growing pot pot pot

IF David Cameron doesn't make it as a shepherd or a memoirist – hard to believe, but it could happen – perhaps he could try his hand at potato farming. In the South Pacific.

On the island of Vanuatu, you see, they're handing out free gardening tools to encourage more people to plant spuds, so they don't have to spend money importing Maris Pipers and King Edwards to feed themselves and the hungry tourists who are so vital to the island's economy. The volcanic soil is incredibly fertile, apparently, and great for growing anything.

And it's the "anything" bit that's important here because behind the sudden enthusiasm for spuds is a drive to encourage Vanuatu's youth to ditch the cash crop they currently prefer – marijuana. “Pending the outcome of the project,” Radio New Zealand reports, “it is expected to be introduced on other islands also.”

I don't imagine anyone's holding their breath. The Vanuatu chippies probably won't be offering anything homegrown in their pokes any time soon. The ice cream vans, on the other hand ...

Watching Depp Depp Depp

AMONG that subset of enthusiasts who keep a weather eye on specific subjects, people or places – for example birdwatchers, Vatican watchers and Pyongyang bampot watchers – are a growing band of Depp watchers, devoted to everything Johnny. Thanks to the Hollywood A-lister's ongoing lawsuit against his former managers, The Management Group (TMG), for allegedly mismanaging his money, and their counter lawsuit against him, there's been a pirate gold-sized haul of information and allegations for Depp watchers to pore over recently.

The latest nugget to set their tongues wagging is the allegation by TMG that the actor employed a sound engineer on a yearly retainer to feed him lines through an earpiece so he didn't have to go to the bother of learning them. The lucky engineer's name isn't known – by me, anyway – but if it was Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards it would explain Depp's laconic, London-accented delivery in the Pirates Of The Caribbean film series. Either way, the engineer is one of 40 full-time employees on the Depp payroll. Drop him a postcard and cook up a vaguely plausible job title – something like Regius Keeper Of Johnny's Bandana And Tricorn Hat Collection – and you could be the 41st.

Other examples TMG give of Depp's alleged profligacy include his purchase of enough Hollywood memorabilia to fill 12 storage facilities; his 45 vehicles, 70 collectible guitars and 14 houses; the chain of islands he owns in the Bahamas; and his (admittedly rather large) monthly wine spend: $30,000.

Depp's lawyers have responded by calling the claims “psychobabble”. Mind you, we're talking about the guy who once told the Wall Street Journal “If I want to buy 15,000 cotton balls a day, it's my thing”, and who definitely did spend £3 million on the funeral of a departed friend.

Then again, that friend was legendary author Hunter S Thompson and the send-off involved his ashes being fired out of a bespoke cannon mounted on top of a 150ft tower shaped like a fist. So it, at least, was probably worth the money. No-one ever said Depp watching was a dull past-time.

Feeling skint skint skint

AS a (notional) placard waver and (sofa-based) inequality activist, I never thought I'd find myself sympathising with the wealthiest people in society – or the 1 per cent as they're known. But it turns out I've been overly hard on them. Despite earning an average gross annual salary of £267,000 (source: the 2016 World Wealth and Income Database), our one percenters are actually dissatisfied with their lot and – get this – don't think of themselves as well off at all. Why? Because they don't compare themselves to the 99 per cent earning way less than them but to the 0.01 per cent of multi-millionaires whose children their own kids rub Jack Wills-clad elbows with at their various expensive private schools.

The findings come from a London School of Economics study in the form of an anonymous questionnaire surveying attitudes to wealth and worth among the 1%. One respondent, an investment banker who earns “multiples of the hundred thousand”, says he feels “very poor” compared to the parents of his children's classmates, some of whom have fortunes of £100 million and who are therefore able to spend time with their kids and even take them to school sometimes. To our banker, that level of fortune “feels wealthy, but earning a hundred thousand just doesn’t”.

Who knew being a multi-millionaire was a qualifying factor in determining people's ability to do the school run? I'll look at my fellow parents with a new-found respect in future.