GARY SMITH’S Supreme Court victory has irked his employer, so-called celebrity plumber Charlie Mullins, but it will encourage other workers to challenge dodgy “self-employed” status they feel driven to adopt.

Mullins, the Pimlico Plumbers proprietor who recently switched political and financial allegiance from Tories to Liberal Democrats over their shared rejection of the EU referendum decision to leave, paints Smith as a bit of a wide boy rather than an exploited worker.

In his view, Smith is “a highly paid, highly skilled man who used a loophole in current employment law to set himself up for a double pay day” and Mullins cannot believe that the highest court in the land has backed his Court of Appeal decision.