Jim Davidson, the comedian and light entertainer, has been declared bankrupt over an unpaid £700,000 tax bill.
Davidson, 52, said he no longer wished to play shows just to clear his debts, and had been forced into bankruptcy after HM Revenue and Customs refused his request for a break from payments.
"The tax man has, for reasons best known to himself, pulled the rug out from under my feet," he told the BBC.
"I am still pretty solvent," he added. "I just can't pay £700,000 right now."
Davidson, who lives in Dubai, had been paying £400,000 a year to clear a £1.4 million tax bill, earning the money from performances back in the UK.
But he said he and his manager had decided this could not continue.
"You cannot keep going back to the same theatres," he said. "I don't want the tax man to put me in a position where my career looks as if it is failing, because it isn't."
In December he stars in the pantomime "Dick Whittington" at the Orchard Theatre in Dartford, Kent.
- Telegraph
