Page 3 Profile: Sting, Musician

Sting, Musician (Rex)

A fool and his money are soon parted…

Not Sting. The musician has revealed that his six adult children will not inherit his multimillion-pound fortune, saying he does not believe in trust funds and he doesn’t want to leave his children with fortunes that would be “albatrosses round their necks”. He told the Mail on Sunday: “I told them there won’t be much money left because we are spending it! We have a lot of commitments. What comes in we spend, and there isn’t much left.”

Uh-oh, is that the sound of the repo man knocking on the door?

Sting grew up as Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner in a working-class family in Wallsend, North Tyneside. But these days, as the ninth richest musician in Britain and Ireland, according to the 2013 Sunday Times Rich List, with an estimated fortune of £180m, he isn’t exactly living on the breadline. Nevertheless, he claims not to have much to spare at the end of the month as he has 100 people on his payroll, and insisted he does not bankroll any of his offspring. “They have to work. They know that and they rarely ask me for anything, which I really respect and appreciate.”

So there’s no chance he’ll loosen the old purse strings?

The former Police frontman, who’s written the music and lyrics for The Last Ship album, based on his memories of growing up in a ship-building town, conceded: “Obviously, if they were in trouble I would help them.”