If I can become a multi-millionaire anyone can, says businessman vastly underestimating role of luck

A BUSINESSMAN from a humble background who built a fortune from scratch wrongly believes his example proves that anyone can be rich.

Martin Bishop, 43, started work as a receptionist but thanks to freakish character traits and circumstances managed to grow a successful online retail empire. This, he feels, conclusively proves that poor people want to be poor.

Bishop said: “My story shows that anyone from an underprivileged background can amass a fortune. There’s no way the capitalist system only rewards a tiny, lucky few with large fortunes.

“I started with nothing. Grew up in a council house, mum always had to buy me and my brothers the cheap trainers. Look at me now. If everyone took my highly unusual career path there’d be no more poverty.”

However Bishop failed to add important facts such as going to an excellent comprehensive school, a surprise inheritance of £30,000 from an aunt he used for a start-up, and benefitting from flexible government loans scrapped under austerity.

He also omitted to mention that his company began trading exactly when its niche IT skills were hugely in demand, making it almost impossible to lose money, a situation which has changed permanently now.

He went on: “It’s all a matter of positive thinking. That and the fact that I am a driven, workaholic sociopath who’s prepared to work 20-hour days.”

Bishop has now published a memoir, Go For It!, featuring a photo of himself with arms crossed, as if being a successful entrepreneur were a simple matter of crossing your arms.

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'Arise, Sir Twat': Your guide to Gavin Williamson's knighthood

BRITONS are genuinely shocked by useless former minister Gavin Williamson getting a knighthood. Here we answer your understandable questions about this baffling event.

How the f**king hell did a twat like Williamson get a knighthood?

The obvious reason is he was a loyal Boris Johnson supporter. But there’s a plausible rumour that it’s to keep quiet about yet more damaging revelations about the PM – he’s made threats to spill the beans before. So basically you can have a knighthood for being a blackmailer. Maybe you can get one for credit card fraud.

Does he have to slay dragons like a Ye Olde Worlde knight?

No, because they don’t exist, and it’s just as well. Williamson is so incompetent he’d return from battle saying ‘Got it, kicked the dragon’s arse’. Then it would turn out he’d actually killed someone’s labrador.

Don’t you need to have achieved something great to be a ‘Sir’?

Nah. Honours are mainly cronyism or crass crowd-pleasing, eg. Dame Mary Berry. A life peerage recently went to Sir Ian Botham, who just happens to support Brexit. Robert Mugabe was knighted once, and he was just mental. Williamson did win fireplace salesman of the year 2007 and 2008, so maybe it’s a surprisingly generous reward for that.

He must have done something notable, surely?

Yes, being preternaturally incompetent. His main cock-up was the exam shambles during Covid, but there’s lots more. As defence minister, he said ‘Russia should go away and shut up’. If only Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky had thought of that, the idiot. There was also an illicit office romance, best forgotten about if you don’t want unpleasant visions of Williamson pumping away cluelessly on top of you. 

Is anyone actually pleased about this?

Williamson, obviously, because he’s too thick to see the hollowness of his ‘achievement’. And maybe his pet tarantula Cronus. Yes, he really is the sort of creepy macho twat who owns a tarantula named after a Greek god.

So basically there’s no reason whatsoever for this twat to get a knighthood?

Correct. It may even pave the way for more dreadful people to be knighted. In the future, don’t be surprised to see Sir Vladimir Putin, Sir Prince Andrew and Sir Crazy Frog.