I don’t really have much to add on the subject of the death of Rod Liddle, aside from that that’s one less column in The Sunday Times I am closer to buying it again, but does anyone remember the beef between Hepworth, Ellen, Word Magazine and the alleged satirist and actual wife beater? Was there a healthy exchange of opinions?
Rod Liddle
by 50 Comments
I remember reading an item in The Word magazine where there was a list of people who in The Word’s opinion had made “a little go a long way.” Rod Liddle was on the list. In the next months issue Rod Liddle had a letter printed in the magazine which went something like this :- “Dear David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, made a little go a long way have I? Better than making a lot go a little way. Still want to form a band? Cunts.
Ever the diplomat …
Well, I mean, at least they printed it.
He was entitled to his opinions. Mine is that he wasn’t a very good writer, but he learned to successfully cover for it with all the other stuff.
Nonetheless, he was a human being and he had a family, so they have my condolences. At least their suffering is finally over.
Mine is that he was on ok writer but an awful human.
I worked with him for a while at the spectator. He was as awful a person to deal
with as his writing would suggest.
Byee
Never speak ill of the dead, I say, and he does leave a grieving family, but as the right-wing media apparently never apologise for or cancel one of their own, their eulogies at times like these can be irksome.
Don’t you mean icksome?
I vaguely remember the opprobrium, then surprised when Heppo waded in, in support of Richard Littlejohn, after a reader, me, blogged in his dislike of that writer.
Ah yes Dickie Littleshit who writes his ‘patriotic’ columns for the Daily Heil about the parlous condition of England’s formally green now brown and crispy land from his gated community in Florida. What a …
As a wag on BlueSky has posted “If you can’t think of anything nice to say, I believe there’s a vacancy at The Spectator.”
Oh very well played, whoever said that!
Harsh but fair.
(Applause)
I’ve never paid much attention to Liddle except when my attention was drawn in that direction by his latest controversy. I’ve watched a few YouTube clips now and what strikes me is that both physically and in manner he was of a type with Boris Johnson, but without the desperation to be liked.
He was the editor on the Today programme I think that’s when I stopped listening.
It was Humphrys that made me head for Radio 3 in the mornings, where I have remained. Bizarrely, he contests that Today became really annoying after he left.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/11/the-hill-i-will-die-on-radio-4-today-programme-bbc-news
I have always found the Today programme insufferable, it is just so middle class and so very pleased with itself.
I find it interesting that Liddle was regarded, at least by some, as a left wing influence when he edited the programme. I wonder how many of the extreme views he subsequently expressed were actually his views on things or was he just stirring things up?
His early left wing credentials seem real – he wrote speeches for and was a research assistant with the Labour Party. It looks like he flipped after leaving the BBC having fallen out over a Guardian column mocking the pro hunting lobby.
Sometimes I wonder if journalists adapt their opinions according to who they are writing for. I recall Melanie Phillips writing for The Observer and seemingly having fairly liberal views. She then “flipped” to extreme right winger when she moved on
Columnists invariably write for their audience.
It’s part of the reason that about 99% of opinion columns are so worthless. Particularly in an era where the internet is already overflowing with everyone’s pointless thoughts 24/7.
Yeah, well, that’s just, like your opinion, man.
1000-words-by-lunchtime merchants. Used to be one myself, if only 1 in 14 lunchtimes.
You’d have been in the 1% Mike.
I think you have the order wrong.
I would suggest Melanie Phillips flipped her views and moved on when they were incompatible with those of her employers.
I couldn’t ever be bothered trying to unearth and read MP’s earlier work to back this assertion up, but I don’t think she was ever really possessed a progressive mindset. There was always a reactionary hidden beneath a “radical” veneer that allowed her to stay in gainful employment. Once she had established herself, that was no longer something she needed to maintain.
Allison Pearson was another one
Remember when she was ‘the voice of reason’ on The Late Review? She did a Word to the Wise column in the mag, and one of her opinions was that having so many opinions is what drives opinion columnists nuts (she was between columns at the time), a contention she had done her best to demonstrate ever since. Job down, Allison. Stand down soldier.
talk about making a little go a long way. My god, she’s an awful writer.
I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly read anything by him or heard him speak, and by the sound of it I haven’t missed out on too much.
From what I’ve read about him since his death, it sounds like he was a fairly angry man. I decided some time ago to avoid such columnists. The news overall is so awful already that I don’t need to read somebody who just makes things sound even worse.
I miss the days of the writers who used to do fun colour pieces – the late Peter Tory in the Express, back when it used to be relatively readable, was a good example. Getting paid to be professionally angry seems like an unhealthy lifestyle to pursue compared to that.
Also a football supporter – well, Millwall, supporter – who really wanted to fit in with the hard men but… wasn’t. Pathetic little man.
Never ‘eard of im. I did have a minor conniption mistaking the name for Ron Mael. But sounds like I haven’t missed much.
Worth reading
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/06/i-knew-rod-liddle-and-hated-what-he-became
As someone who has so far survived 13 years after being diagnosed with COPD, I found the bit about when your face goes grey it’s all over pretty alarming. But Mrs thep reassures me that my face hasn’t gone grey, so onwards and alongwards.
Hopefully you stopped smoking, if you ever did
Yes, 36 years ago. Too late.
Sad, a wreck of a man in every sense at the end.
He’s another Charlie Kirk. A saint of the right that never was.
Trigger warning: this week’s Spectator is a Liddle eulogy-fest. Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Fraser Nelson…apparently he was a positively saintly human being who was doing us all a favour by saying the unsayable.
So glad I never paid the publishers of The Spectator any of my money.
Full disclosure: neither do I, it comes with my Libby sub.
Mine too, free from the library. Didn’t realise the Speccy was there though.
I get the Oz edition, not conspicuously different from the Brit edition.
On several occasions, he dismissed cyclists as being somehow less worthy of sympathy or concern, even stooping to suggest that the death of one particular cyclist somehow improved the gene pool. Unspeakable. Yes, of course his death is tragic for his family and friends, but I am glad his bilious writing will no longer be influencing his readers.
Well of course no one is obliged to read him, a principle I actively employ with (picks name at random) Owen Jones. In fact I’d rather read Rod Liddle than Owen Jones.
You know you don’t have to choose.
Very true I don’t read either of them. Two cheeks of the same arse.
Well, we can all choose who we read but not sure why Jones is on a par with Liddle and his relentless Islamophobia, urges to shag underage kids or calls for Glastonbury to be bombed, though I might have missed something.
Jones can be irritating, his constant need to label those he disagrees with as _____ists and/or _____phobics coming across as rather childish, but his heart is often in the right place. I’ve never come across Liddle before, but from what I’ve read since his death I don’t get the impression that his heart was in the right place.
@slotbadger
I watched Owen Jones on Piers Morgan Uncensored yesterday. I think he came across very well. Well prepared and articulate. (It helped that his “opponent”, one Josh Hammer, came across as every bit as unpleasant as he looked.)