Julie Burchill: You Can't Part a Phoney From his Money in the Age of the Hypercrite

But recently a sumptuous smorgasbord of such flagrant hypocrisy has been laid before us that I feel a new category is in order: hypercrites, who combine the worst aspects of the hypocrite AND the phoney combined with some absolute lunatic conviction that NO ONE WILL NOTICE WHAT THEY'RE DOING. Hiding in full sight, if you like; it's as though they believed those gimcrack ads about invisible capes in the back of the old-school comics.

Thus the high-flying poltroon Prince Charles lectures us about our carbon footprint while clocking up enough air miles to make a trolley-dolly dizzy. The Pope rails against the moral vacuum at the heart of modernity while presiding over the biggest paedophile ring in recorded history. Head honchos at the Government quango the Commonwealth Development Corporation live it up in Michelin-starred restaurants, kick back in five-star hotels and take £330 taxi rides from Brussels to Paris, out of the £2.5bn pot of public money set aside for fighting poverty in the world's worst-off countries.

And now Bono, champion of the poor, has moved a good deal of the business of the "ethical" fashion house run by him and his wife, and set up to "encourage trade with Africa and celebrate the possibilities and people of the continent" from said Africa to China. No doubt to celebrate the possibilities of the sweatshops, long hours and low pay that's SO a good look right now!'

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