Gary Barlow to launch investigation into how he could have been avoiding tax

I think the most heartbreaking thing about Gary Barlow's response to his tax "avoiding" ways is that it's taken him months of knotted-brow think-clunking to come up with the "I know, I'll pretend that when I signed off on that scheme that was going to save me all that tax, nobody told me I was signing off on a scheme that was going to avoid tax" defence:

He is now investigating how accounting staff allowed his money to be put into the fund.

The singer has vowed to “leave no stone unturned”.

It's not clear yet whether Barlow has appointed a person to carry out this investigation into Barlow, but rumours suggest he might invite Gary Barlow to lead the inquiry.

A source close to the star revealed: “This is an incredibly complex issue and Gary is looking into it carefully.

"He is trying to get to the bottom of it."

'For instance, just yesterday, he went through one of the big chests stuffed with money and jewels to see if he could find any of the paperwork relating to the tax scheme.' (Pictured)

The "source" is keen to stress that there's no way that Gary could be expected to know what he was doing:

“Gary’s view is that he put his trust in the hands of financial experts. He is a musician, he knows nothing about money, he never has, so he entrusted people to advise him.

“He writes music and he sings and he pays finance ­experts to keep his money safe and do the right thing with it.

"Gary isn’t evil, he isn’t a money grabber and he is very upset about this."

Very, very upset. You know, how can you be expected to know when your financial advisors tell you that putting your money into a scheme will magic away your tax liabilities that that's a bad thing to do, right?

“He isn’t passing the buck ­either.

“He is trying to sort this out, to make sure others don’t find themselves in the same position.”

That's Gary Barlow, there, bravely not passing the buck by, erm, blaming his advisors and threatening to sue them.

You'll notice that Barlow's ire is directed at finding out who got him involved in the arrangements that got him into trouble. If he was really contrite, wouldn't he be trying to get sympathetic journalists to write about how he's investigating if he's been badly advised into joining other schemes?