Rod Liddle

I was up in your neck of the woods last week – frankly, I expected you to put a bit of a spread on, but there we are. This was a brief break designed to convince the missus that we should move to Northumberland and that, contrary to what she believes, you really can buy tampons north of Daventry. The reasons for wanting to move north are a) the people are nicer, b) I’m from up there anyway and miss it, c) the countryside is nicer, d) the property is cheaper, and e) there are next to no mewing media scumbags. It’s also safer, as I patiently explained to my wife as we passed the spot where Gazza kindly brought some chicken sandwiches and lager for Raoul Moate. But what the hell do you do for food? I mean, do you ever eat out?

Good stuff from Ross Clark in last week’s magazine about the extraordinary amounts of money wasted by our local councils, largely – as every newspaper has subsequently reported – on themselves. In a sense while the humungous salaries of the chief executives are indeed infuriating, it is the massive increase in salaries lower down the chain which ensure we pay crippling council bills. Councils have presided over an exponential increase in staff earning 50k and more. And it’s not just councils and not just the public sector. This morning my local station was “inspected” by Southeastern trains; fellow commuters counted ten of the uniformed fuckers, wandering around with clipboards.

Sunday was a fairly dismal time for me, as a kid — and indeed for our dog, Skipper. Sunday was a fairly dismal time for me, as a kid — and indeed for our dog, Skipper. Church I could just about put up with, but Sunday school was an embarrassment too far: I would scurry home from it in fear that my friends might see me, wracked with shame, like a Tory MP on his way home from a visit to the rent boy. Attending Sunday school did not do much for you with your mates, in the way of kudos. But then home wasn’t much better. The television was allowed on only for Songs of Praise at about 7.30 p.m., and I wasn’t allowed out to play because it was, of course, the Lord’s day, and He didn’t approve of football.

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 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’?

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 you might have expected from them. You wouldn’t have expected to overhear Gray saying, for example, “how refreshing to see a woman running the line today – it is about time that football, like so many of our institutions, showed a commitment to equality, diversity and inclusiveness. Incidentally, Richard, you must try to catch Marton Csokas in Twelfth Night at the Cottesloe. It’s had some bad reviews, but his Orsino is fabulous.

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 in — yes — Tunisia. The rioting had been going on for the best part of a week by the time she showed up, but this fact had entirely escaped her notice. She told the reporter that upon arrival she saw some holiday-makers milling in the hotel lobby and approached one to ask cheerfully if they were going on one of the set excursions, perhaps to a local souk. ‘No, you fantastically silly bitch. There are no excursions.

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 from Manchester, were besmirching my pink bri-nylon sheets with their rank and ghostly effusions. I can see absolutely that this disqualifies me from offering a bed and breakfast service to the public, even if I don’t dignify my distaste for other people with the title “religious faith”. We are surely past the point when B&Bs could advertise their properties with the caveat “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish?