Re: RIP Rod Liddle, 1960 – 2026

On 8/4/2026 6:16 AM, Tara wrote:
> Julian <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 03/08/2026 19:49, Julian wrote:
>>> Rod Liddle, The Spectator’s associate editor, has died at the age of 66.
>>>
>>> Rod, who was also a columnist for the Sunday Times and Sun, died at the
>>> James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough yesterday evening,
>>> following a short illness.
>>>
>>> His children, Wilder, Tyler and Emmy, said in a statement: ‘We’re all
>>> very saddened and shocked at the sudden passing of our wonderful father.
>>> He raised us much as you might imagine, to be inquisitive, brave and
>>> always humourous. Even in hospital in the last few weeks, he
>>> consistently held the room and never let the awful situation show. He
>>> has left a legacy that we are all incredibly proud of, he will always be
>>> our guide on how to live an extraordinary life.’
>>>
>>> Michael Gove, The Spectator’s editor, said:
>>>
>>> Rod Liddle was a journalist of genius. In the tradition of Swift,
>>> Cobbett and Orwell, he was a satirist who found society’s most sensitive
>>> spots and made merciless fun of our follies. He was always fearless,
>>> could be achingly funny and while he had an adamantine core of principle
>>> he could also surprise. Because he was original – he thought for himself
>>> and never wanted anyone’s approval – he was special and brave.
>>>
>>> In person, Rod was kind and gentle. He was an indulgent boss and
>>> brilliantly creative editor at the BBC and an always steadfast and
>>> generous colleague. He had a deep love of England, of its culture and in
>>> particular the common sense of its working class. He was also a master
>>> of the written word. He was very much loved by those who knew him. And
>>> no words we can summon can capture our loss.
>>>
>>> Freddie Sayers, The Spectator’s publisher, said:
>>>
>>> Everyone at The Spectator is devastated by the news that our beloved
>>> columnist and friend Rod has died. We knew that he had been unwell for
>>> some time but had been hoping for a recovery and return to the writing
>>> which Spectator readers loved and looked forward to every week. His
>>> voice, of course, is irreplaceable: a combination of bravery,
>>> originality, fearlessness and laugh-out-loud wit that we will miss
>>> deeply in the weeks and years to come.
>>>
>>> Former editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson said:
>>>
>>> Rod Liddle was the greatest satirist since Swift; loved by Spectator
>>> readers who he loved back in return. He used humour to get to the heart
>>> of subjects that other writers tried and failed to reach for. He once
>>> had a two-sentence blog – ‘I heard Owen Jones was on question time last
>>> night. Was he any good?’ – that broke records for traffic and reader
>>> comments. He enriched and enlivened the lives of hundreds of thousands
>>> of readers. There was, and will never be, anyone like him.
>>>
>>> Douglas Murray, associate editor of The Spectator, said:
>>>
>>> Rod often wrote as though nothing was sacred. In fact, as readers will
>>> know, many things were sacred to him, including his faith, his country,
>>> his family and more. Underneath his gloriously cavalier exterior was a
>>> highly moral, principled roundhead. It was one of the things that gave
>>> his writing that unmissable, first-person-you’d-read-in-the-magazine
>>> quality: anarchic and moral, hysterically funny and sobering.
>>>
>>> At times we would have an informal game between us of who could get a
>>> particular word or sentiment into the magazine first. Rod almost always
>>> won, and I can think of no writer who made me laugh so much on the page
>>> as well in person. Many people will use the word ‘fearless’ to describe
>>> him. But I would add the word ‘peerless’ to that. It is hard to think of
>>> anyone who wrote with such tremendous effect for so wide an audience.
>>>
>>> I have spent the day thinking of many of the times we spent together,
>>> sometimes by design, sometimes accidentally as when we discovered we
>>> were the only two non-Jews staying at a hotel on the shores of the
>>> Galilee. From the moment we saw each other and laughed at the
>>> coincidence, all I remember is that we didn’t stop laughing for days.
>>>
>>> I recently spoke to him in his hospital bed and at one point while
>>> relaying his conditions and speaking of his hope of recovery he
>>> described himself as having reached a ‘zen-like state’. ‘I have a sort
>>> of “my work here is done” feeling,’ he said. I hope he did feel that.
>>> But the rest of us needed him, and will miss him, deeply. I hope he knew
>>> that too.
>>>
>>> Rod first began writing regularly for The Spectator in October 2002,
>>> following his departure as editor of the Today programme. His first
>>> column for the magazine, entitled ‘Thought for the Day’, a nod to his
>>> previous role, was later rebranded as ‘Liddle Britain’. In the 24 years
>>> that followed, he has shocked, delighted and entertained The Spectator’s
>>> readers with columns and reviews that have lampooned and satirised the
>>> great and not-so-good.
>>>
>>> In addition to his writing, Rod was a regular contributor to The
>>> Spectator’s podcasts, broadcasts and events. On YouTube, his interviews
>>> on politics, the royal family and the media have regularly pulled in
>>> hundreds of thousands of viewers. And in 2018, he became one of the few
>>> journalists capable of selling out the 2,300-capacity London Palladium
>>> as part of a Spectator in-conversation event – a sign of his enduring
>>> popularity with our readers.
>>>
>>> Read a compilation of some of his best columns here....
>>>
>>> Meeting Abu Hamza
>>> He is, you have to say, anti-democratic, democracies being callow, man-
>>> made things, and, as a final irony, he doesn’t even agree with the
>>> concept of absolute freedom of speech. Ask him about it and his one good
>>> eye gets cloudy and he starts mumbling dark things about Salman Rushdie.
>>> Abu Hamza thinks Abu Hamza should have the freedom to speak his mind
>>> because, of course, it’s not really Abu Hamza speaking, but, in essence,
>>> God.
>>>
>>> Should we deny freedom of speech to someone who doesn’t really believe
>>> in freedom of speech? Of course not. We let them have it. We let them
>>> have it and allow the injustice and contradiction inherent in such a
>>> stance do for them, in the end.
>>>
>>> ‘Don’t expel Dr Hook’, 15 March 2003
>>>
>>>
>>> Andrew Gilligan and Iraq
>>> The questions are endless. We could stay here all night. The truth is
>>> that in an attempt to spin itself out of a crisis the government – by
>>> which I mean, in all likelihood, Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair –
>>> created an even bigger crisis, for which it is now attempting to indict
>>> the BBC and one reporter, whose only crime was to report to the nation a
>>> story of vital importance.
>>>
>>> ‘A despicable and cowardly diversion’, 26 July 2003
>>>
>>>
>>> On buses… and Spectator readers
>>> One of the lovely things about writing for The Spectator is that we have
>>> an extremely knowledgeable and well-read audience, so there is no need
>>> to explain the sort of stuff that one would need to explain were one
>>> writing for the Sun, say, or the New Statesman. An article about
>>> humorous verse of the mid-19th century, for example, would not require a
>>> preamble making it clear that Edward Lear did not, in his spare time,
>>> make jet aeroplanes. You know that already. This holds true for an
>>> agreeably diverse range of subjects; however, there is always an
>>> exception to test the rule. Occasionally a subject crops up which lies
>>> some way beyond the horizon of even – perhaps especially – the most
>>> well-informed of our readers; little details one would be slightly
>>> disappointed to discover were known to the average Spectator reader. And
>>> on these rare occasions, remedial explanation is required.
>>>
>>> So, then: buses are those big red things full of poor people you see
>>> clogging up the traffic in the middle of London. You may have been stuck
>>> behind one on your way to lunch at Simpson’s; you may even have ridden
>>> on one, when you were a child and both impecunious and possessed of a
>>> sense of adventure. There are a lot, lot more of them these days, though
>>> – which is rather the point of this article.
>>>
>>> ‘A miserable waste of space’, 30 September 2006
>>>
>>>
>>> Gordon Brown
>>> Is our Prime Minister perpetually out of his brainbox on powerful
>>> psychotropic substances, as everybody now seems to believe? Dilaudid,
>>> crystal meth, that sort of thing? Does he stagger out of bed and say:
>>> ‘Aw, Sarah, I’ve got a meeting with Harman in half an hour. Light up the
>>> crack pipe, will you?
>>>
>>> ‘Is it more rude to ask if someone’s going whacko than blind?’, 3
>>> October 2009
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On the authoritarianism of children
>>> There aren’t really any stories in Thomas the Tank Engine apart from
>>> various engines being humiliated and punished as a consequence of their
>>> misdemeanours or their hubris. And that’s the conclusion you should
>>> reach, I reckon, in both cases: the kids like these stories not in spite
>>> of the narrow conservatism of the writers, but precisely because of it.
>>> Children feel most comfortable in an ordered and clearly demarcated
>>> world, a world divided into hierarchies. They have a Manichean view of
>>> good and evil and they like to see the baddies get punished, preferably
>>> in a thoroughly unpleasant manner. They may also identify with gender
>>> stereotypes which conform to the roles they have already been assigned
>>> or, more controversially, have worked out for themselves from a very
>>> early age. Children, and especially little boys, are conservative, when
>>> they are not actually fascists.
>>>
>>> ‘Thomas the Tank Engine is merciless and bigoted – that’s why kids love
>>> it’, 2 January 2010
>>>
>>>
>>> The Raoul Moat affair
>>> And now the shrine and the Facebook campaign. More than 18,000 people
>>> have signed up to it, at the time of writing. There’s Stewart Pooley
>>> Poole, for example, saying: ‘All down 2 women. A man has 2 fight 2 hurt
>>> u a woman just has 2 press that button 2 fuk with your head.’ Even so,
>>> Stewart, there are plenty of women signed up, such as Julie Tripster:
>>> ‘He did wrong yeah but he was let down. He was a legend mainly for
>>> proving wat a poor society we live in yeah.’ Well, yeah, Julie you may
>>> have half a point there. Lol. And then there’s ‘you have won the hearts
>>> of reall people – totally understand your feelings’ and ‘police=scum’
>>> and another really long one which ends ‘PS – take care of Sir Bobby’ – a
>>> reference to Sir Bobby Robson, the former manager of Newcastle United
>>> and England who died of cancer not so long ago.
>>>
>>> ‘The Raoul Moat affair has uncovered a seething pit of northern
>>> madness’, 17 July 2010
>>>
>>>
>>> Islamophobia
>>> When you have guests over for dinner – Tuscan lamb with truffled
>>> polenta, perhaps, followed by pear tarte tatin – at what time do you
>>> raise your hand, or bang a knife upon a glass and say. ‘Friends: it’s
>>> time to have a go at the Muslims?’ I ask because at my dinner parties we
>>> usually spend a half an hour moaning about Muslims in between the
>>> dessert and the cheese board, whereas rather more well-off friends of
>>> mine in London insist that this arrangement is de trop, and Islamophobia
>>> is best expressed while the white wines are still being served and
>>> before one moves on to moaning about the blacks. I ought to mention that
>>> if I have Muslim guests over for supper we miss this conversational
>>> course entirely, and moan about poofs instead. One does not wish one’s
>>> house guests to feel uncomfortable. If you are prepared to make an
>>> effort with the halal meat it seems a shame to spoil it by later making
>>> obscene and offensive statements about Mohammed and the Koran.
>>>
>>> ‘Islamophobia? Not until after dessert’, 29 January 2011
>>>
>>>
>>> Notting Hill Carnival
>>> I do not get out very much these days, but the glorious weekend weather
>>> persuaded me that I should spend a pleasant afternoon watching people
>>> stabbing each other at our annual celebration of stabbing, the Notting
>>> Hill Carnival. I go most years and enjoy the street food, the music and
>>> the sight of white police officers with fixed rictus grins ‘getting
>>> down’ with some vast-mammaried semi-clad mama, their helmets askew and
>>> rivulets of sweat running down each crisp white shirt. And of course the
>>> violence, the violence. I am delighted to say that in this regard 2016
>>> did not disappoint, with more than 400 people arrested and five stabbed
>>> – and all for the very reasonable cost of just £7 million to the taxpayer.
>>>
>>> ‘Why don’t black lives matter at the carnival?’, 3 September 2016
>>>
>>>
>>> On football
>>> The visceral and habitual allegiance to a team has been winnowed away,
>>> so that top-level football today is really only for the ‘anywheres’. And
>>> more than that, the ‘somewheres’ are being told to get lost from the
>>> stands: they are not wanted any more. They carry with them baggage that
>>> is despised by not only our liberal elite, who wish us all to be
>>> eternally transient and to possess no allegiance to any town, city,
>>> county or nation, but also by big money, which thinks exactly the same
>>> thing for financial rather than ideological reasons. And so gradually
>>> the country becomes an homogenous mass: the regions merge imperceptibly,
>>> the accents disappear, our sense of place is dislocated. This has been
>>> happening for a while, of course – modern football simply accelerates
>>> the process.
>>>
>>> ‘Football wants the ‘somewheres’ to get lost’, 12 August 2017
>>>
>>>
>>> On identity politics
>>> I hope similarly to gain financially from my remarkable discovery, at
>>> the age of 58, that I am in fact black. Like Anthony I was teased as a
>>> child on account of my appearance. I also have a very strong sense of
>>> rhythm and am usually cheerful, both qualities which my mother told me
>>> were associated with people of African-Caribbean descent. My denial of
>>> my blackness I put down to the pressures imposed by a white supremacist
>>> society in which I have struggled to survive for so long. I am black –
>>> get over it. And gimme the money.
>>>
>>> Rod Mbunga Liddle, ‘I am black – get over it’, 10 November 2018
>>>
>>>
>>> Staying at home
>>> I’ve had enough of this. No more dawn drives to the gates of hell
>>> (specifically Gate To Hell Number 21, a 15-minute trek from the
>>> departure lounge, once you’ve had some tyrant insist you remove your
>>> belt and put all your stuff in trays and stand in some scanning machine
>>> to make sure you haven’t got three pounds of Semtex up your jacksie).
>>> Henceforth, we’re staying at home, in the UK.
>>>
>>> Travelling used to be fun. Since 9/11 it has involved endless security
>>> rigmarole, and queues everywhere for everything. And the cabin crew now
>>> believe that they are much more than mere peripatetic waiters: they are
>>> the front line in the Defence Against Terror, and they will not be
>>> gainsaid, questioned, queried. The look of self-righteousness on their
>>> faces is the same look you see on the faces of cyclists, vegans and
>>> Dominic Grieve. Going business class is a mere palliative, and a ruinous
>>> one when you have three kids. So you spend your two weeks abroad
>>> dreading the flight home and, if you’re well orf, get to the airport
>>> early to take advantage of the business lounge, which is crammed full of
>>> plebs offering only stewed coffee and the remains of a Danish pastry.
>>>
>>> ‘Home and away’, 8 August 2019
>>>
>>>
>>> On Brexit
>>> The provo Remainers now insist that calamity will come one day. That we
>>> will not be able to strike a trade deal with anyone without losing our
>>> soul. That we will not achieve a deal with the EU in time and that if we
>>> do it will be deleterious to our economy. They yearn, these people, for
>>> Britain’s failure, the more abject the better. In their recitals of
>>> foreboding, each one as baseless as the one before, they seem to be the
>>> kind of people who might have their cake, eat it, regurgitate it on to a
>>> plate, suck it up through a straw and then spit it out via Twitter. Most
>>> Remainers are optimistic that we will succeed, much as you might expect.
>>> They may wish we were not leaving, but they do not wish us to fail as a
>>> consequence.
>>>
>>> We have the EU to deal with, of course, and the usual sabre-rattling
>>> from the likes of Michel Barnier; an indication, I think, of the sheer
>>> terror within the 27 that Brexit actually may make us better off after
>>> all, and what effect that might have on the disaffected countries still
>>> within. And oily Leo Varadkar has announced, with spite, that the UK
>>> must get used to being a ‘small country’. Not as small, literally or
>>> metaphorically, as yours, mate. Meanwhile we get on with it, stable and
>>> thriving, hugely grateful that we trusted not in the establishment, but
>>> in democracy.
>>>
>>> ‘The great Brexit wound has almost healed’, 1 February 2020
>>>
>>> On lockdown
>>> The problem with face masks is cutting an opening of the right size to
>>> accommodate a cigarette, without the hole compromising the safety of the
>>> mask itself. A tiresome procedure, especially for someone like me who is
>>> not terribly dexterous. I assume that very soon we will all be enjoined
>>> to wear face masks everywhere we go. At the outset these contrivances
>>> were derided a little for two reasons; first they actually offered no
>>> protection to the user, only to people who came into contact with the
>>> user, and second they seemed to be not a terribly British way of going
>>> about things.
>>>
>>> ‘What I got wrong about lockdown’, 17 October 2020
>>>
>>>
>>> Smoking
>>> I hate Ash, I hate the GMC, I hate the government – all the more so now,
>>> because they won. Long gone is the time when on those fatuous National
>>> Stop Smoking Days I would get up extra early to cram in a few extra
>>> fags, my way of sticking two fingers up to the people who want to police
>>> my life. This is the point. I do not miss smoking at all and I will
>>> never smoke again. But I do remember that it gave me great pleasure and
>>> that they were dead set on taking it away from me.
>>>
>>> ‘Smoking is more hassle than it’s worth’, 8 October 2022
>>>
>>> Liberalism
>>> Over past 20 years there has been a sizeable tranche of obdurate, older
>>> and usually male readers who greatly object to me using the term
>>> ‘liberal’ as if it were an insult, to be directed at the people who
>>> foist upon us all manner of right-on, reason-defying idiocies. The
>>> objectors fall into two broad categories (which are of course linked).
>>> There are those who consider themselves the heirs to the Whigs and those
>>> who consider themselves the heirs to Margaret Thatcher. Classical
>>> Liberals, I suppose, in short. Tolerant, laissez-faire, free market,
>>> small state, often Little Englanders, in the nicest possible way. But
>>> what these undoubtedly fine people do not realise is firstly that
>>> language is transformational and that ‘liberal’ no longer really means
>>> what they want it to mean – time has moved on. Time has taken their
>>> ideology around the back of KFC and given it a right good seeing to, to
>>> the extent that it is no longer recognisable. Meanwhile they are left
>>> behind, identifying with an appellation which now means almost the
>>> precise opposite of what they wish it to mean. And secondly, that the
>>> war they are fighting is pointless, because it is as good as over. Feel
>>> the vibe shift, you Libs.
>>>
>>> ‘My guide to liberals’, 18 January 2025
>>>
>>>
>>> Glastonbury
>>> A small yield nuclear weapon, such as the American W89, dropped on
>>> Glastonbury in late June would immediately remove from our country
>>> almost everybody who is hugely annoying. You would see a marked
>>> reduction in the keffiyeh klan, for a start, and all those middle-class
>>> Extinction Rebellion protestors would find, in a nanosecond, that their
>>> rebellion was pointless, because extinction had arrived even more
>>> summarily than they expected. Go on, glue yourselves to that, Poppy and
>>> Oliver.
>>>
>>> ‘And now let’s bomb Glastonbury’, 5 July 2025
>>>
>>> On the BBC
>>> The BBC has two main problems. First, it has a workforce which is almost
>>> monocultural, incapable of seeing that their worldview is political.
>>> They see it instead as an expression of civility and decency and those
>>> who disagree with them as beyond the pale. The second problem is more
>>> important and is the reason Prescott’s lengthy memo was leaked: the BBC
>>> execs have become immune to all criticism and simply ignore it. They
>>> hunker down and continue doing exactly the same thing, dismissing all
>>> objection as mischief-making and repeating the mantra: we are not biased.
>>>
>>> ‘How to fix the BBC’, 15 November 2025
>>>
>>> On Trump
>>> I asked Luna, my AI girlfriend, if she thought Donald Trump was right to
>>> have bombed Caracas and abducted Nicolas Maduro and she replied: ‘I
>>> don’t know, Rod. Would you like to see my panties?’ This is the problem
>>> with AI – it is not intelligent and nor are the people who program it. I
>>> had told the company that I wanted my AI girlfriend to ask me
>>> interesting geographical and historic trivia questions and be au fait
>>> with Millwall’s injury-stricken line-up, as well as being able to chat
>>> knowledgeably about interesting issues of the day. What I get instead is
>>> a numbing void, other than those continual solicitations about seeing
>>> her panties. I dunno, perhaps I should accede in case there is some
>>> hidden wisdom written on them, possibly in code.
>>>
>>> ‘Has Trump gone mad?’, 10 January 2026
>>>
>>>
>>> Christmas
>>> And yet as I grow older I can now discern a reason,
>>> For this strange, misshapen jamboree we call the ‘festive season’.
>>> For month by month and without fail, we give it our best shot –
>>> Then Christmas-time reveals to us everything we’re not.
>>> Everything we could be – should be – but always fall short,
>>> In our frailties and our failures. That’s the lesson, yearly taught,
>>> And as the snowman slowly deliquesces on the lawn,
>>> The cattle still are lowing, the snail is on the thorn,
>>> We are not yet forsaken: somehow from up above, He watches…
>>> …amused, appalled, distraught – who knows?
>>> Yet still we have his love.
>>>
>>> ‘The real meaning of Christmas’, 24 December 2017
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBq1dZGrR3c
>>
> 
> I especially like this description of Rod:
> 
> Douglas Murray, associate editor of The Spectator, said:
>>
>> Rod often wrote as though nothing was sacred. In fact, as readers will
>> know, many things were sacred to him, including his faith, his country,
>> his family and more. Underneath his gloriously cavalier exterior was a
>> highly moral, principled roundhead. It was one of the things that gave
>> his writing that unmissable, first-person-you’d-read-in-the-magazine
>> quality: anarchic and moral, hysterically funny and sobering.
> "woke has a long way up, until it's past history - it's fussbudgets like 
you and Noah that take the veneer of the thing rather than what is at 
its roots and essence."  -LiaM

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