The problems of being famous.

Sports personalities are really suffering at the moment. You could almost feel sorry for them.

There’s Harry Redknapp who has been seen in tears as he defended his reputation (and presumably his pocket) against accusations of tax evasion. He’s all smiles now then as he’s been cleared of charges.

And then this morning I read about Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, former world number one female tennis player, telling the world that her parents stole her fortune and that now she is struggling to pay her debts to the Spanish tax authorities. Maybe this is a new form of Spanish tax evasion. Mind you, she’s just published a new book of memoirs so maybe she can recoup some of the money. If unemployment wasn’t so bad in Spain, I would suggest she went out and looked for a job.

You can see that I am just oozing sympathy for these people, can’t you?

If I were still in the business of giving Spanish lessons, I would make a reading comprehension out of this bit of news.

In another Mediterranean country with unemployment problems, I understand that Mario Monti has been upsetting his people by suggesting that un posto fisso – a permanent job – is rather boring. Just as the Spaniards dream of un empleo fijo so the Italians long for un posto fisso, preferably, in both countries, in the town where they grew up and ideally close enough to where they live so that they can go home for lunch.

Mr. Monti, of course, was looking at things from a different, more European perspective. He wanted people to realise that the nature of employment has changed and you have to be prepared to move around and change not just your place of work but also the kind of work you do on a fairly regular basis these days. He just didn’t put it in the most diplomatic way but, then, he’s not bothered about popularity. His job is to sort things out for Italy, not to get himself re-elected.

Maybe the Italian people should have made that interesting gesture with the middle finger that we now think of as very American but which, according to anthropologist Desmond Morris, probably went to the USA with Italian immigrants. I discovered this fact in an article about an American television network which had to apologise after the pop star M.I.A. extended her finger during a performance of Madonna’s “Give Me All Your Luvin’” during Sunday night’s Super Bowl half-time show.