He literally puts the Sting in stingy – stool-hugging, lute-strumming, Kayapo Indian Chief-bothering, Tantric sex-practising, macrobiotic yogic-trance dullard Gordon Sumner has announced that he won't be leaving any of his £180 million fortune to his six children.

I won't be leaving a £180 million fortune to my children, either, but this has more to do with the fact that I don't have a fortune than the fact that I've decided to spend it all on the 100 staff for my mansion or on helicopter trips to take my chef from Wiltshire to London in order to make me bowl of pasta (he did this).

'I told them there won't be much money left because we're spending it!' he said, 'we have a lot of commitments. What comes in we spend and there isn't much left.'

One can only commend the ludicrously wealthy Sting for wanting his children to know how it feels to be poor. Perhaps the next time he invites them over for tea at his country pile he could ask them to each choose a toilet to clean and then toss them leftovers to catch as he sails round his moat in a yacht carved from a single diamond.

When I die, absolutely anything that's left over can be distributed between my loved ones – this may sound generous, but as a journalist, I am unlikely to leave much more than a handful of coppers (possibly still warm from a self-service till), the paltry Euros I've failed to spend abroad and some of those supermarket trolley tokens you can attach to your keyring.

But, I feel I will leave them a far greater legacy. Thick hair. Cynicism. A fairly extensive collection of vintage Ladybird books. An innate ability to choose the most expensive thing in any shop regardless of whether the price tag is showing. A brass crocodile.

Just in case I peg out before I've updated my will, here is a list of things my children can inherit that don't involve cash – yes, cash would be handier, but if having cash meant that I'd have been responsible for having written Fields of Gold or the lyrics to 'Russians' then I forsake it all on their behalf.

10 Really Great Things My Kids Will Inherit From Me:

1) A possibly unparalleled collection of entirely black clothes which could be repurposed to become a possibly unparalleled collection of entirely black dusters.

2) No genetic predisposition to acne/baldness/elephantitis.

3) Essential life skills such as – keeping a can of Febreze by the door in case teenage boys come round and you need to attack their trainers, the ability to make entirely beige meals, how to feign interest in people's overblown anecdotes, the art of list-making, why it is important to have a library of fabric conditioners, removing hair from a bath plug without vomiting and how to persuade other people to do the things you don't want to do.

4) A fantastically low tolerance for alcohol.

5) The knowledge that I didn't rhyme 'hysteria' with 'America' in the lyrics to Russians.

6) A hatred of waistcoats.

7) Lots of vinyl records, lots of books, lots of photographs and plenty of other stuff that modern life has made obsolete.

8) A huge number of embroidered tray cloths which I collect because they are pretty and because I think that one day I might find some use for them. I will never find a use for them. No one has a use for them. NO ONE.

9) Grammatical pedantry.

10) Finally, I bequeath my entire range of swear words, which range from Chaucer to modern-day and include such favourites as '****' and '******* ****' and '**** ******* **** **** ***' Some of the vintage swear words that I own are incredibly valuable, especially when you need to employ a little 'stealth insulting' and want to cast a shadow over someone's virtue without them realising it.