Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Thank God for Sir Philip Green, the perfect modern hate figure

Hating him is easy. It’s rather harder to see what he’s done that isn’t basically business as usual

issue 06 August 2016

Good old Sir Philip Green. Where would we be without him? So often, those national hate figures let you down. That lady who put a cat in a bin in 2010, for example. Bit of a tragic loony, in the end. Likewise Tony Blair. Not this one. His diamond has no flaw, and we can all join in. He’s perfectly awful in every way.

He looks the part, too. Rich-guy hair, of the sort most rich guys don’t deign to have any more. Nonexistent at the front, lacquered and far too long at the back. Brilliant. Clothes that don’t quite fit, because he clearly pays a stylist to tell him they do. Graydon Carter’s description of Donald Trump — ‘short-fingered vulgarian’ — fits him like, well, a glove.

There is snobbery in the debasement of Sir Philip.

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