AMANDA PLATELL: I'm a loyal monarchist, but how can it be right that the King pays less tax than popstars like Harry Styles? Charles's tax bill has only raised more questions than answers - and I smell a rat...

AMANDA PLATELL: I'm a loyal monarchist, but how can it be right that the King pays less tax than popstars like Harry Styles? Charles's tax bill has only raised more questions than answers - and I smell a rat... Although I am a loyal monarchist and lifelong royal watcher, I’m afraid I just do not buy the line that the royals have come clean about their finances. Amid the plethora of headlines about their decision that they will ‘never return to Buckingham Palace’, we were also told that ‘History is made as Charles and William reveal their tax bills’, that ‘The King offers transparency over his tax status’ and that he’s ‘opened up the books’. On and on it went, front page after front page about how the King and William wanted to be honest with the people. But was this really a historic, seismic development or a sophisticated PR operation from Buckingham Palace that continued to mask an uncomfortable truth – that the royal finances are shrouded in obfuscation and the details remain mostly under wraps? True, no monarch has ever revealed their personal tax bill. So jolly good, God Save the King etc. for telling us that he paid £12.9million in 2024-25. But the disclosure only raises more questions than answers. And I smell a rat. The income on which the King owes tax hasn’t been declared. We don’t know about earnings from the financial and property investments of his private estate. We’ve no idea how much he deducted from his Duchy of Lancaster income of around £25million for official expenses. King Charles is personally said to be worth around £680million – although throw in his ownership of the 45,000-acres Duchy of Lancaster and his vast collection of royal treasures, and some estimates put his net worth at nearer £2billion. The income on which the King owes tax hasn’t been declared. We don’t know about earnings from the financial and property investments of his private estate, writes Amanda Platell Harry Styles paid £24.7million in tax, around twice what Charles did. And yet the singer is worth some £235million, less than half the King’s personal wealth And when we learn about how much other rich folk pay, things got murkier still. The singer Harry Styles, for instance, paid £24.7million in tax, around twice what the King did. And yet the pop superstar’s worth some £235million, less than half the King’s personal wealth. Good on Harry! But why is King Charles paying so much less than him? Why such a paltry tax on his immense wealth when a pop star pays twice what he does. Sorry, but none of it adds up. And funny that the massive media blitz about Charles paying his taxes – which was orchestrated by the Palace – came at a time when support for the monarchy is dwindling. Not just because of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his corrosive effect on the institution but also because of the growing realisation and anger – especially among Gen Z youngsters – about the privileges members of the Royal Family appear to enjoy at taxpayers’ expense. Frankly it was a laugh out loud moment for the King to try to get down and gritty with his subjects to show he, like us, pays his due. As for leaving Buckingham Palace, why should King Charles and Queen Camilla or Prince William and Princess Catherine worry – even though the public forked out £370million for its refurb? They’ve got plenty of other options for living arrangements. Crikey, between them, William and Charles own or hold in trust a property portfolio comprising at least seven palaces, ten castles, 12 mansions, and 56 cottages and valued at an estimated £19 billion. The truth is that the Royal Family is still living a hugely privileged lifestyle with unimaginable wealth, not all of which we are told about. And however much Buckingham Palace tries to dress it up with the King’s apparent tax details, that is becoming increasingly difficult to justify when so many ordinary taxpayers are struggling to get by. Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband Peter Murrell was rumbled for embezzling SNP funds after buying Mickey Mouse Le Creuset ramekins. Many still ask why she didn’t query them. What wife doesn’t notice her husband buying Mickey Mouse ramekins? But there’s nowt so queer as folk. After Rod Stewart, 81, nearly collapsed on stage in Utah, then had to use an oxygen tank to finish the gig, I have one message for him – with apologies to his lyricist: ‘Roddie, wake up I think I got something to say to you. The stage light when it’s in your face it really shows your age.’ Go home, Rod, enjoy your well-deserved – and much needed – retirement. You couldn’t have tried any more. Supergirl? She's silly Milly Amid universally disastrous reviews, actress Milly Alcock, 26, describes her new Supergirl movie heroine as a character who ‘doesn’t live inside the binary’ of gender expectations. She adds that the film centres on a modern, independent woman rather than being defined by a romance or male lead, adding that her Supergirl would ‘probably go both ways’. Whatever next, Superman self-identifying as a woman? It’s a only superhero franchise love, not an LGBTQ lecture. The seductive Killing Eve star Jodie Comer, famous for her very skimpy outfits, appears at a Summer Solstice party braless in a cutout dress revealing her eye-wateringly magnificent abs. In a more reflective moment, Jodie said: ‘My dream, and I’m manifesting here, is to have a space where I can just be in my underwear, gardening.’ That’s if she owns any underwear! Killing Eve star Jodie Comer showed up at a Summer Solstice party braless in a cutout dress revealing her abs Westminster Wars So many questions as Andy Burnham made his way to Parliament to be sworn in as an MP and unofficially crowned as the next PM before posing for a group selfie with hundreds of lapdog Labour MPs desperate for a job. Why was he filmed surrounded by a gaggle of gorgeous blondes arriving on foot at Manchester Piccadilly station in his trademark black T-shirt and scruffy jeans – when a chauffeur had driven him there in a Mercedes? Is it a sign of things to come that when Kemi Badenoch derided Andy as ‘a pair of eyelashes and a black T-shirt’ he thought it funny to post a video of himself saying: ‘It’s dark blue actually.’ Oh, how we laughed! The heatwave reminds me of when I was a kid in Perth. When the temperature hit 90F, we were allowed to turn the TV to face the carport, so we could sit outside watching it. If it reached 100F, my two brothers and I were allowed to sleep outside on wet towels on the lawn while Mum and Dad stayed inside. What would social services say about that today? An NHS betrayal Cold comfort for the still-grieving families affected by the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust maternity care scandal that the investigation concluded 500 mothers or babies needlessly died or were injured. The Trust was run by arrogant men who refused to listen to their concerns. It has taken 16 years for this scandal to be brought into the open – yet not a single NHS boss has been sacked. Now we learn three of them were even honoured with CBEs. The chaos - and kindness - of Katie As she promotes her four-part Sky series ‘Katie Price: I’ve Nothing To Hide’, how truly sad to see what a dazzling Page Three Girl celebrity she used to be. Especially given her marriage to spiv ‘husband’ Lee Andrews and the fact that constant surgery has left her looking like a grotesque gargoyle. Yet some credit to Katie, now 48. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks. She’s a fighter, a survivor and amid the utter chaos of her life, has looked after her profoundly disabled son Harvey with touching tenderness. In 1999 (L), Katie used to be a dazzling Page Three Girl celebrity. Now (R) she looks very different During the US Epstein investigation, Microsoft founder Bill Gates revealed he’d had three affairs while married to ex-wife Melinda – dalliances with a Russian bridge star, a Russian nuclear expert and a Harvard medic. Oh dear, does the gormless geek not realise that without his billions he’d be lucky to pull an overweight hooker in a Moscow dive? So much for departing PM Starmer’s ‘legacy’ legislation – the social media ban for under-16s based on the Australian model. In Oz, reports show four in five children found a way around the rules and still access harmful content. An abject failure, like his Premiership. Cheryl's motherly love Good for Girls Aloud star Cheryl Tweedy, ex-partner of One Direction’s Liam Payne, for insisting their son Bear, nine, won’t inherit a penny of the £21million his late Dad left him – until he is at least 25. ‘Inheriting this amount of money at a young age is enough to send anyone sideways,’ she says. Respect to Cheryl. The last thing she wants is for Bear to end up like his famous father – wreathed in riches but alone and high on drugs before that fatal fall from a Buenos Aires hotel balcony aged just 31. Jamie Varley, killer and sexual abuser of Preston Davey, is in HMP Wakefield, the jail where inmates stabbed to death Lostprophets singer and child sex offender Ian Watkins. Terrified Varley is wailing: ‘I will end up like Ian Watkins.’ Forgive me for being unchristian, but I truly hope he does.