Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
I’m a bit late with this, as the book has been out a few days or so. But it’s worth getting hold of Mick Hume’s book about newspapers: There is No Such Thing As A Free Press. It’s very good, a timely defence of freedom of the press at the time of Leveson, but rightly
The West Coast rail franchise balls up is a remarkable kettle of fish, isn’t it? I remember when the successful tender was announced by the government being surprised at the ferocity of old beardy’s rage, and also astonished at the figures he was quoting. Can this be right, I wondered to myself at the time?
Some dog-munching old thug from Pyongyang has been addressing the United Nations, warning that his country is the ‘world’s hotspot’ and a spark could trigger a thermonuclear war. It’s quite possible I’m wrong about this, as I am wrong about a lot of things, but North Korea worries me far less than one supposes it
Every so often a story appears in the newspapers which, while it might seem on the surface sensational and arresting, actually leaves you feeling somewhat less than astonished, all things considered. There have been at least two of these stories recently. The first, in the Daily Telegraph, alleged that Scotland Yard was investigating suspiciously large
Just finished reading a book by Kevin Marsh, the editor of the Today programme at the time of the whole Gilligan-Campbell-Kelly business which saw the director general of the BBC kicked out of the corporation. It hasn’t aroused very much interest, largely because it contains no new information which would either exonerate the programme or
Among the vast number of British people who are somewhat surprised to see the disgraced MP David Laws back in government is David’s own father, Tony Laws. Laws jnr was kicked out, if you remember, for having pocketed a very large amount of money in expenses as a consequence of lying through his teeth. David
Should UKIP do some sort of electoral deal with the Conservative Party? This is being talked about at the moment: Cameron pledges himself to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, Nigel Farage agrees not to field candidates against a bunch of Tory MPs somehow characterised as Eurosceptic. I can see how this would
I seriously contemplated being a teacher once upon a time, when I was lot younger. It seemed to me an agreeable doss, and one didn’t have to be too bright or too ambitious, or possess any great quantity of knowledge. I sometimes wondered what sort of teacher I’d prefer to be; one of those ingratiating
They were in the Greek Orthodox cathedral in London on Valentine’s Day 1989 for Bruce Chatwin’s memorial service — all of London’s literary elite, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Antonia Fraser and the rest. Outside the cathedral the journalists and snappers had gathered, but they were not there for Chatwin. Halfway through the service Rushdie felt
I’m halfway through Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie’s memoir of what it was like to be given a death sentence by medieval religious savages. I’m reviewing the book for next week’s magazine. We were, as a country, rather less than unequivocal in our determination to protect Rushdie for his right to exercising free speech; plenty of
I suppose it is largely our fault that most politicians are mentally ill. We eviscerate them daily and one assumes that some of the poison eventually seeps through and begins to affect their central nervous systems. Being held up to ridicule for their incompetences, being dependent for their livelihoods upon the whims of idiots, and
I see that Labour is now fifteen points ahead in the latest opinion poll, a Populus poll for the Times. While the Tories have dropped four points on the previous month, it still seems to me that the bulk of that Labour lead is rightly disaffected Liberal Democrats: they are down to ten per cent.
It’s about time we revamped the rather stale format of the BBC film review show, the one that has that Nina Simone signature tune and was presented by Barry Norman and more latterly Jonathan Ross. I don’t even know if the programme is still extant. Anyway, my idea is for a new review show which
My father once told me that tolerance was a great and precious British virtue, and that we shouldn’t waste it on homosexuals. Even at the time this struck me as a somewhat illiberal and unkind point of view to which I privately objected. It was easier though, back then, to hold such ‘homophobic’ beliefs because
Here’s an idea for a series which could run and run: hypocritical corporate toss. The chocolate and pet food manufacturer Mars has demanded that a chippy in Stonehaven must put up a disclaimer in its shop advising that Mars does not approve of the restaurant’s delicacy, deep fried Mars bars. If I were the owner
I got an invitation the other day to attend the launch of some incendiary tract about Europe published by a think-tank. I get quite a few of these, especially stuff from what was once the Tory far right (and by ‘far’ I mean ‘far’ as in sort of Alpha Centauri, i.e. more easily measurable in
I got an invitation the other day to attend the launch of some incendiary tract about Europe published by a think-tank. I get quite a few of these, especially stuff from what was once the Tory far right (and by ‘far’ I mean ‘far’ as in sort of Alpha Centauri, i.e. more easily measurable in
I’ve been in Scarborough, working on a story. Stayed in a perfectly nice hotel and this morning came down for my breakfast. I was greeted at the entrance to the dining room by a waitress who addressed me thus: “Good morning sir. Have you had breakfast before?” I said well, yes, I’m 52, you know.
There was a news report on BBC South East last week expressing outrage that two people had not been arrested and charged for posting allegedly ‘homophobic’ comments on Twitter about the gay fans of the football club Brighton and Hove Albion. The reporter was incensed that charges had not been brought and the miscreants duly
Here’s a mystery which has been keeping me awake at night recently. Why do people who live on islands, and even more so very small islands, tend to be grotesquely overweight? I stumbled across this strange apparent correlation the other evening, while sporcling. This is what I do in my spare moments these days, in