Harry Redknapp: Tax doesn’t have to be taxing…

…Unless it involves being formally arrested and asked to explain yourself to the Crown Prosecution Service…Unless you have your house raided, your computer taxed and your hard drive rifled through by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

That would be taxing on the mind, the reputation, and the relationship with the missus after she is informed of the niche archive of Photoshopped images involving your ‘big man, little man’ combos participating in lewd sex acts together.

Tax doesn’t have to be taxing…unless you face doing time over the missed payment of £40,000, a sum that, incidentally, wouldn’t even buy your first team a golfing trip to Ireland. Reports that Redknapp has stashed the 40 grand in coins under the skin on his face are unfounded but are backed up by substantial eyewitness evidence.

According to an ‘exclusive’ in the News of the World back in December: “His lawyer received a letter informing the Spurs boss he will have to face court following a long-running police probe.” Too easy.

Diego Maradona. Now there’s a man who did it properly. If you’re going to dodge the old taxman you may as well do it for a good few million then blow it all on cocaine and gastric bands.

To date Maradona has paid a mere 42 thousand of the 37 million Euros he owes to the Italian government. He is still manager of Argentina. There is hope for Old ‘Arry yet. He should merely flee to Buenos Aries, take over from Diego and add Martin Palermo and Lionel Messi to the archive. Every cloud.

Milan Mandaric has also been charged over the same issue: "If they are talking about this investment in Monaco it was done away from football, just between two friends - Harry and Milan - and not between manager and chairman. It was done away from the club, away from England." Oh yeah, that sounds perfectly kosher Milan, no-one’s going to suspect anything dodgy now are they?!

‘Arry does a great Del Boy impression with his ‘sawt of the erf’ cockney accent, but it seems that, if the allegations levelled against him are to be believed, he has taken this a little too far. Unlike Del you’d think he already had a bit of wonga in his skyrocket and didn’t need to shirk the taxman in the first place.

Instead of flogging dodgy Korean VHS players to Boycie down the Nags Head, Harry has some merchandise of his own, equally as dubious, to pedal to his fellow Premier League managers. He quite understandably wants to offload it as quickly as possible.

“Got a larvely little piece here Arsene me old china. Barely used, finest Soviet produce this. Parvlulychenka on the label. That’s the top brand in Russia right now. Top performance every time, guaranteed. Always there for you when it counts.

“What’s that Carlo? Yeah, yeah, regular as clockwork, completely compatible with the English lifestyle. He’s been brilliant for me, I tell you, cost £14 million but he’s yours for eight. Now I can’t say fairer than that can I?!

Enjoy it while you can, ‘Arry, you might soon be trading food tickets for soap in the clink. Bonne chance!