WHAT'S NEXT FOR JASE, AFTER CREAMING IT FROM LIVERPOOL'S CAPITAL OF CULTURE?

THIS is going to be hard to swallow...

But we can exclusively reveal that the Harbarrowboy is buying a Spanish ice cream factory while on his sickie!

Seems Jase has finally decided he has taken enough of a licking at the Culture Company.

So the Harbarrowboy has instead opted to (banana) split from Liverpool.

He didn't want to be gradually frozen out by the fireman Bradley (surely not? eds).

According to usually reliable sources (shouldn't that be sauces? eds), Jase has slowly begun to melt away from Merseyside.

(That's enough! eds)

He has already sold one of his homes - a large detached, according to the Daily Post - on the Wirral.

But the Harbarrowboy has two other properties on Merseyside which he intends to sell to the highest bidder.

Meanwhile Jase has been slowly recuperating from his obviously extremely serious and grave heart condition while at his sprawling hacienda on the Costa del Crime.

He has been relaxing (see our exclusive photo, right, eds) by regularly logging on to the Liverpool subCulture web site to catch up on Culture in the city.

But he has also found some time to extend his already bulging property portfolio in readiness for when his departure from the Culture Comedians is officially announced.

Jase has identified a local ice cream manufacturer as a sound business proposition.

(He's the next Alan Sugar, this fella Harbottle - after all, there's blazing hot sun all the year round, so the locals are bound to want two or three icies every day. Result - he's a multi-millionaire in no time at all! Brilliant! eds)

In order to buy the factory, Jase has had to scrimp and save to stump up enough cash from his lifetime of struggling at the coal face at the Culture Company's Millennium House Fun Palace (that's enough sick jokes, eds)

Any suggestion that the poor Harbarrowboy has been creaming off council tax payers money would be totally wrong. That possibility is wafer-thin.

As is the disgraceful claim that he has gotten fat on all that Liverpool lolly and is now splashing out in the Spanish sunshine.

Or that Jase has been sprinkling hundreds and thousands on to his new bizarre new enterprise.

(Right, that's it! eds)

All together now, "Just one cornetto..."