Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
I don’t know who is editing the BBC’s PM programme these days – I’ve lost touch with my old corporation mates – but whoever it was deserves a word of praise for the manner in which the show covered the death of the composer John Barry. A long montage of the man’s most gilded, and
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. When you have guests over for dinner — Tuscan lamb with truffled polenta, perhaps, followed by pear tarte
Magnificent schadenfreude being shown by all and sundry over the case of Sky Sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray and their off-mic comments about how useless woman are. This is at least partly because Keys and Gray are genuinely awful and nobody liked them very much anyway. And their off-mic comments were precisely what
When Tony Blair talks about the invasion of Iraq he tends to preface his comments with the following sentiment: “Look, we can argue about whether or not it was right to invade, and that’s a respectable argument. But what you cannot do is argue that it was undertaken in bad faith, that there was some
There was a stupid woman on the television news the other night, interviewed the day after she and her family had arrived for their holiday in — yes — Tunisia. There was a stupid woman on the television news the other night, interviewed the day after she and her family had arrived for their holiday
The more you read, the more you discover that it was Blair – entirely alone in the country – who wished to invade Iraq in 2003. The cabinet didn’t want to, even Blair’s cabal didn’t want to. Even Alastair Campbell had grave reservations. Everyone around him thought it wrong, or illegal, or both. And watching
This post is not about one of the crucial issues of the day, so if you’re hungry for controversy, please move on. This is a trivial personal thing and I wondered if you might help. A couple of months ago I started to read a new novel by one of our esteemed highbrow-ish writers. I
One of the reasons I don’t run a bed and breakfast establishment is that I cannot imagine approving of any of the sort of people who would stay in it. I would sit downstairs in the kitchen seething knowing that upstairs fundamentalist Christians, or homosexuals, or cabinet ministers and their secretaries, estate agents or people
There have been some strange responses to the Oldham by election. Right wingers such as Harry Phibbs and Toby Young saying it spells trouble for Labour, lefties insisting its disastrous for Cameron, the likes of Danny Finkelstein suggesting that underneath the big trouble lies in wait for Clegg. Of them all I think Finkelstein is
The Chinese are doing their panda thing again, buying international goodwill by depositing one of these doomed and slightly sinister creatures with any country which might otherwise have an objection to their foreign or domestic policy. Worried about human rights and prisoners of conscience? ‘Ere you go, mate, have a panda and shut your gob.
Greetings from Omaha, Nebraska, where the temperature is colder than it was in the Arctic Circle. I flew out from Heathrow with Delta Airlines, via Detroit. However, I missed my connecting flight because we were held on ground at Heathrow for two hours while some Asians were kicked off the plane. There were seven of
Oooh, some of you lot get a bit hissy when the word “right” is banded around, don’t you? I used the term “far-right” in respect of the three parties which are not the Conservative Party. I suppose I could have used “further-right”. But for those of you, like Old Slaughter, twitching uncomfortably at UKIP being
Just back from covering the campaign in the Oldham East & Saddleworth by-election – where, I suspect, the Lib Dems will not do quite so badly as many either hope or fear. It seems to be the Tory vote which is collapsing; odd, really, as the seat should be a three way marginal. One of
A bizarre report on the Asian child abuse court case on the BBC last night, which spent most of its time attempting to exonerate the Pakistani community as a whole, including clips of Pakistanis saying “actually, we probably shouldn’t abuse kiddies” and a white child abuse campaigner saying hey, look, it’s not Pakistanis who are
Last time I looked, my online petition was not generating the support I had expected. You can find it on Facebook and it is entitled ‘Everybody Should Be Sacked or Killed.’ Only 38 people have so far pledged their support for this laudable proposition, which is way short of the number that would enable my
I hope you are looking forward to the tsunami of industrial effluent which is coming your way in the first quarter of the new year. You will not be able to avoid it, unless you are Helen Keller. One way or another, Wills and Kate are going to get you. Or, more properly, their agents
Happy Christmas to you all. It may well be that, as the Muslim poster campaign in London has it, we will all require abortions as a consequence of seasonal revelry, and that the festival itself is evil. But at least, when the relatives arrive and Strictly Come Dancing with that fabulous jackanapes Vince Cable, we
Thoroughly enjoying the feminists tying themselves in knots over the case of Julian Assange. I wrote in the Sunday Times a week ago that lefties were compromised over the chap: hero for embarrassing America, less of a hero for allegedly raping someone. Back then the very angry campaigning group Women Against Rape put out a
It’s as John Updike once put it – they’re getting within the big fella’s range. Captain Beefheart died at the weekend, the latest in a long line of interesting people from the world of popular music to pop his clogs. In commemoration then, here is his somewhat uncompromising and not hugely tuneful “Dachau Blues”, from
It’s jolly nice to be proved right about everything The most important, and comforting, thing to emerge from all that Wiki-Leaks business was that, by and large, we were right. All the things we suspected, or knew either instinctively or through common sense, were proved to be correct. Prince Andrew — arrogant, rude and with
