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Where Does Gary Barlow's Tax Avoidance Rank in a List of Other Heinous Things He's Done?

Probably somewhere in the upper-quartile but just to be sure, here's a list of everything that makes him a shit.

Tony Blair loved GMTV, the gentle orange sofa, and the tame back and forth with a nondescript orange presenter; it was a greater arena for him than Parliament, an opportunity to demonstrate not his political pedigree but his 2.4-children family folksiness. According to one journalist who joined him on a train journey while he was signing Christmas cards, he barely looked at most of the cards he was signing, but when it came to the GMTV card he was at once able to recall every one of its bimboish presenters and took great care and time in writing the message. Churchill had The Viscount Cherwell, Blair had Fiona Phillips.

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David Cameron has to make do with Good Morning Britain, a weird iPad friendly version of GMTV with a set that looks like a branch of Comet and presenters that sit around a messy desk rather than a sofa - perhaps to suggest that in austerity Britain most people are working second jobs at 6am in the morning. The questions are still are as easy to dodge: in an interview this morning Cameron controversially came out against the N-Word and in favour of the people of Britain. He also waded into a debate about whether Gary Barlow should return his special badge from the Queen because of a complex and illegal tax avoidance scheme he partook in. Cameron said Barlow shouldn’t have to give his OBE back, but perhaps he knows there’s no way he could ever get it off him. After The Queen made Barlow organise all the Jubilee celebrations, travel the Commonwealth in a jingoistic adventure recording the colonies project and provide some erotic release for a long backed-up Prince Philip just so he could get one, he’s damned if he’s going to return it.

The thing is, not paying millions in tax is pretty bad. But Gary Barlow is such a heinous urethra bubble, how bad is it really in terms of all the terrible things he’s done? In order to find out, I wrote all the things that makes him a shit, then organised them, Homeland style with string and drawing pins, until they were a sliding scale of shittery. So in reverse order:

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He turned ITV Saturday nights into a shit A&R meeting on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon.

Say what you like about the X Factor but at least it provided some fragment of high-production sparkle for millions of otherwise dreary nights of creamy yellow takeaway and FOMO. Gary Barlow joined the show after its best ever series - the one where One Direction were caught fingering dancers in car parks, Rihanna garnered the rath of a nation for a hamstring-ruining strip show, and Operation Yewtree incarnated itself in a single man. But Barlow wasn’t going to have any of that, he arrived like a grey cloud on a summer's day, criticising any act who didn’t come out with a straw hat and an acoustic guitar singing Stevie Wonder in the style of Sandi Thom. He turned something that was, at the very least, an enjoyable respite from the gloominess of modern living, into very embodiment of that gloominess. He was less a judge on a entertainment show, more of a pop health & saftey inspector coming to PAT test your contestants.

He pretended to be an expert in the music industry despite the fact his own label has been an unmitigated disaster.

Barlow backed up his tope-faced critique of singers by claiming an intimate knowledge of the current tastes of the music industry. “I have my own record label,” he would preach, in a dull Northern groan that sounds like being told off by a woodwork teacher eating a mouthful of cake. Well yes, Barlow was given a label, Future Records, by Universal. It signed such luminary artists as Emma’s Imagination, Lonsdale Boys Club, Camilla Kerslake and Delta Maid (that's her in the photo). In fact, ever single artist that Barlow signed flopped, either because they were managed so appallingly that they never had a chance, or because they were just shit to begin with. The label closed last year.

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He did this shit.

The only cunts worse than cunts that like Gary Barlow are cunts that say "simples".

He’s become a poster boy for Britain’s right-wing.

The reason Barlow can be so relaxed about his tax avoidance in the first place, is that he has the moral compass of disorientated shrew. Barlow is the card-carrying supporter of the Conservative government that has overseen huge council and public service cuts, much of which would have gone to the very charities Barlow got his OBE for supporting. “There's no one more with-it than David," Barlow assured an audience in Nantwich, before adding, “he’s my number one cool cat daddio.” Beyond just registering support, it seems Barlow has also had an effect on Tory policy. Do the Conservatives have any advice for the millions going hungry or cold or ill because of his large-scale dismantling of the welfare state? Well, as David Cameron himself once said, “If you feel down, if you feel depressed, "Greatest Day" is a fantastic song to lift you.”

He lied about launching a X-Factor style school singing competion in a The Thick Of It-esque ploy to drum up votes for the Conservatives in the last General Election.

After pledging his support for the Tories, Barlow went on the road with Cameron. Presumably his dream was to stand behind a lectern with “Keeping Wealth In The Hands Of Those Who Already Have It” embossed on it, but someone might have thought this a hard pill to swallow. Instead, Barlow joined Cameron to launch a series of new schemes, most of which seemed dreamt up in the urinals two minutes prior. There was some kind of national citizen service, a botched plan to get more kids learning instruments and, perhaps most insanely, a plan to launch a national school singing competition called School Stars. There's still video evidence of this, the pair of them making awkward laddy conversation like they’re in the waiting room of a brothel. Cameron promised to launch the competition in the Autumn of 2010 if he was elected. Shockingly, it was never mentioned again after this. (Also, if you want to see how adept Barlow and Cameron are at lying, skip to the end of the video to see them emotionally commenting on the performance when it’s clearly part of the same interview they did before they went on stage)

He managed to be emotionless on GMTV.

Not paying tax is almost Barlow's worst crime ever, but it's just pipped by this grainy 1997 footage of Barlow on Blair's favourite living room, being gently interviewed by a strobing Lorraine Kelly. Prime Ministers love breakfast television because it allows them to project personality over substance - a friendly face at the breakfast table. But even in this most simple and charming of interviews, Barlow clogs up - only able to recite humourless facts about the specifics of his record's release schedule when Lorraine's just trying to get him to open it up. The most he can muster about his own music? "It's a good record still and I enjoy performing it." If you can't even crack a smile for Lorraine, you must be dead inside.

Follow Sam on Twitter: @SamWolfson