Why Gary Barlow should hang on to his OBE

‘Strip him of his knighthood!’ Or life peerage, or CBE, OBE — or whatever. The cry goes up with a kind of automaticity these days, and with increasing shrillness. As I write, elements in Fleet Street are hyperventilating about Gary Barlow’s OBE. Barlow and two other members of the band Take That are reported to have avoided paying tens of millions of pounds in tax by investing in the Icebreaker Management scheme, deemed by HMRC to be a vehicle for tax avoidance.

Note ‘avoidance’. Steer clear of the word ‘evasion’ because there has been no suggestion of criminality: Mr Barlow and others in his band are threatened only with a hefty bill for unpaid tax.

And a fat lot it will do my own media profile to defend him. Every era has its pet villainies and our own appears to have selected as the moral horrors de nos jours, bankers’ bonuses, tax-dodging and sexual touching.