Harry Redknapp leaving court (Getty)Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp isn't having a fun time at the moment as the subject of an ongoing trial into tax evasion at London's Southwark Crown Court. If you're not up to speed with English legal wranglings, 'Arry's arsenal of lawyers (no pun intended) are working hard to clear his name as the prosecution demands an explanation for payments made into a Monaco bank account, which they deem to be 'tax-free bungs'.
One would expect a person to possess a certain amount of savvy and adroitness to be involved in offshore banking — let alone managing a high profile Premier League team — but apparently this isn't the case. Redknapp has been pleading ignorance throughout the trial, and today jurors were informed that the cockney gaffer can't write or spell, and lacks the kind the organizational skills he might preach to his Spurs defence. The Sun reports:
Redknapp, 64, said: "I am completely and utterly disorganised. I am not going to fiddle taxes, I pay my accountant a fortune to look after me."
He added: "My accountant runs my life. I do not receive my wage slips, they go straight to him. I do not see bank statements. I've a big problem - I can't write."
He added: "I write like a two-year-old and I can't spell".
Dirty Tackle's Irony Detector recorded off-the-chart readings when the man who writes a regular column for The Sun was revealed to be almost illiterate by the very same paper. Yet the UK's favorite tabloid newspaper conveniently failed to report the part where he told the court he "hadn't been paid in 18 months" for his editorial services. Funny, that.
In addition to revealing that he can't even fill in the team sheet before matches, Redknapp also pointed out confused relationship with technology, reports FourFourTwo:
In tape recordings played at Southwark Crown Court, Redknapp said: "I can't work a computer, I don't know what an email is, I have never sent a fax and I've never even sent a text message.
Of course it's cruel to mock someone for poor literacy skills, but the jurors might have had trouble keeping straight faces when he said "I don't know what an email is" in a recording that he knew other humans would hear. (Either he's astoundingly out of touch with modern communication techniques, or he's confusing knowing what something is and how to use it. He probably knows what a Hadron Collider is, but that doesn't mean he knows how to work one.)
Whether disorganization, illiteracy and technophobia are deemed to be legitimate grounds for massive tax avoidance will remain to be seen as the trial continues.
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