Christian Bale is easily our method actor of the week – his dedication to clown-beating even extends to his own clown mother, for God’s sake.

But, in all of this possibly-illegal motherclown-beating kerfuffle, one question has stood out above all others – what makes a newly-minted megastar like Christian Bale start whaling on his mother and sister on the happiest day of his life?

Turns out the reason might be cash. According to reports today, Christian Bale kicked off after his sister asked him for £100,000 to help raise her three children. Frankly we’re disgusted – doesn’t Christian Bale know that all children have the right to receive occasional gifts of more than the average British annual working wage that their mother has managed to guilt out of their moviestar uncle? Shame on you, Mr Bale. Shame on you indeed.

One of the downsides to being famous is that your success tends to attract unwanted curiosity – people know that you’re loaded and they want to take a little slice of your cash for themselves.

When this happens the best thing you can do is to retreat into the bosom of your family. But if you’re Christian Bale, and it’s your family that’s doing the begging, well then you’re pretty much effed up the bum.

That’s apparently the reason for Christian Bale’s still-bemusing assault arrest this week. For the newcomers among you, Christian Bale was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of assaulting his mother and sister right before the London premiere of The Dark Knight. He denies the charges and his family denies calling the police.

Since then, Christian Bale has been bailed and the assault has been described as a strong verbal attack, possibly combined with a mild push. At first the reason for this alleged attack was that Bale’s mother was slagging off his wife, but now The Sun has spoken to a source who claims that Christian Bale got a bit shirty when his sister Sharon asked for £100,000 to help raise her kids:

“Christian is a very wealthy young man and was asked to help his sister out financially. He was asked to loan her £100,000 but he refused and that caused an almighty row. During that row, the women claim, he assaulted them by pushing and shoving them… They are both devastated that it has come to this but want him to be taught a lesson.”

Yeah! Jesus, Christian Bale is such a bastard, isn’t he? He deserves to be taught a lesson – the lesson that you’re supposed to financially bail out any of your relatives who appear to be either greedy or living beyond their means whenever they want just because you’ve starred in a couple of films about a funny-voiced crimefighter in a gimp suit.

Sharon Bale could hardly ask any other members of her family for support, could she? Her mother’s a part-time clown – what kind of financial help could she possibly offer? Those kids need £100,000, not a shipment of abnormally large shoes and a tiny spluttering car that keeps falling apart!

Still, not to worry – even though Christian Bale chose not to help his nieces and nephews out, they’ll still get their cash one way or the other. Probably from all the royalties from their forthcoming memoirs I Wear Rags Because My Uncle Is Stingy And Allegedly A Bit Violent.