Gary Barlow would quite like to apologise

It's now three months since Gary Barlow and some of his chums were found to be "avoiding" tax by putting their money into a made-up scheme to allow rich people to shirk their responsibilities.

Gary has finally got around to sort-of-muttering an apology.

After three months. It's true, there are some operations you'd wait longer for on the NHS, but that's partly because rich people like Gary Barlow put their cash into dubious schemes to avoid paying their share of taxes.

Still, three months in the making, so let's hear it, Gary:

Three months. Two tweets. He's been writing his apology at 35 characters a week.

Three months. And what do we get?

I want to apologise to anyone who was offended by the tax stories earlier this year

There's no need, Gary. Genuninely no need to apologise, as nobody was offended by "the tax stories". In fact, we were grateful for the tax stories.

It's your tax affairs you ought to be apologising for, chuckles. The idea of very, very wealthy men investing in a company designed to lose money just so they could keep a few extra pennies out of paying for the police, and roads, and schools - that's what was offensive.

Not that you were found out and some people wrote about it.

And what does "working to settle things with all parties ASAP" even mean? Maybe you're going to write a cheque to the Exchequer - although I suspect if you were, you'd be a bit more explicit about that - but that doesn't "settle things", because it doesn't undo the fact that, when the nation was passing the hat round to pay for things we all share, your first thought was to try and avoid chipping in.

And you can't even bring yourself to say 'sorry' properly.

Leave your OBE on the hall table and sod off back to your mansion, Barlow.