Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle (born 1960) is a British journalist best known for his term as editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Liddle was born in South London but brought up in Guisborough. He was educated at Laurence Jackson comprehensive school, and while there formed a band called "Dangerbird" with some friends. He attended Leeds University and the London School of Economics. Liddle was a member of the Socialist Workers Party in his youth but worked between 1983 and 1987 for the Labour Party Shadow Cabinet. He then returned to journalism. Liddle was appointed Editor of the daily early-morning Today programme in 1998, partly as a result of a high-profile attack on his main rival, the programme's current editor, Kevin Marsh by Alastair Campbell, the press spokesman for Tony Blair.
The Today programme was established and highly influential through its political interviews, but Liddle was determined to increase the influence of the programme by breaking new stories. To do this he hired newspaper journalists who had experience in investigative journalism. Among the most prominent was Andrew Gilligan, who transferred from the Sunday Telegraph in 1999. Four years later Gilligan was a central player in the controversy over the September Dossier and the death of David Kelly.
Under his editorship, Today won a number of awards - a Sony Silver in 2002 for reports by Barnie Choudhury and Mike Thomson into the causes of race riots in the north of England; a Sony Bronze in 2003 for an investigation by Angus Stickler into paedophile priests; and an Amnesty International Media Award in 2003 for Gilligan's investigation into the sale of illegal landmines.
In addition to his work on the Today programme, Liddle wrote a column under his own name for The Guardian newspaper. On September 25, 2002, he titled his column 'Marching back to Labour': making reference to a march organised by the Countryside Alliance in defence of fox hunting, Liddle wrote that readers may have forgotten why they voted Labour but would remember once they saw the people campaigning to save hunting.
The BBC considered that this was unacceptably partisan and gave Liddle an ultimatum either to end his column or resign. Liddle chose to resign on September 30 2002. With Kate Silverton he presented the short-lived BBC 2 political show Weekend, BBC 4's The Talk Show, continued to write for the Guardian, wrote a book of short stories, entitled Too Beautiful for You, became a team captain on Call My Bluff and also took a job as Associate Editor at The Spectator. He now also writes a weekly column for The Sunday Times.
He was at the forefront of defending his programme, and Andrew Gilligan, in the media during the Hutton inquiry.
In 2004 his personal life was the subject of much comment when he cut short his honeymoon to return to London so he could be with his mistress Alicia Munckton (a receptionist at The Spectator); his marriage ended in a swift divorce. His colourful private life was portrayed in Toby Young's play Who's The Daddy?. Some opinions in his columns have sometimes brought controversy: he once said that cigarettes were not as bad for you as Doctors and Nurses, and that he thought Geordies were like "monkeys and morons", despite being raised in Guisborough, in the North East of England. Such comments have caused some critics to give him the nickname "Odd Rod Liddle".