Re: RIP Rod Liddle, 196 0 – 2026

On Tue, 4 Aug 2026 08:42:48 -0700, Dude <[email protected]> wrote:

>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
>
>https://groups.google.com/g/alt.buddha.short.fat.guy/c/W1TuS1-Vvh4/m/f5IEz-RbAgAJ

LiaM was a longstanding under appreciated intellect here.  I respected
him much.  But did not always agree with him.

It turns out that this quote was directed at Ned and me.  I am not
sure I deserve to be grouped with Ned in anything, but thanks anyway
for the complement LiaM.
-- 
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian  shrinks in horror and warns others away