Sally Bercow (née Illman;^[1] born 22 November 1969)^[2] is the wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. She was a housemate on Celebrity Big Brother 2011 and was evicted from the house on 26 August 2011.

Early life[link]

Sally Illman attended Marlborough College public school, as a contemporary of the British Prime Minister's wife, Samantha Cameron, and went on to attend Keble College, Oxford, dropping out after two years.^[3] The fact that Bercow did not finish her studies at Oxford became a minor controversy in 2009 when it was revealed that she had been sacked from a City public relations firm for trying to conceal this on her CV.^[3]

She was the social secretary of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) while at the University. It was subsequently reported in the Daily Mail that during her time with OUCA, she was involved in a social event for which OUCA booked strippers.^[4] She met her future husband at a national Conservative Students Conference. ^[3]

In a 2009 interview Bercow spoke about alcoholism and one-night stands in her twenties.^[5]

Personal life[link]

She has three children; her eldest son is autistic.^[6] She stated that she would not send her children to a grammar school because of her opposition to selection at the age of eleven.

Political career[link]

Sally Bercow addressed two Conservative Party Conferences^[7] and her husband became a Conservative MP at the 1997 General Election. However, she changed her political allegiance during the founding days of New Labour and campaigned actively for Tony Blair whilst campaigning for her husband (then partner) to win his seat. In 2010, she stood as a Labour candidate for the St James ward of Westminster City Council, receiving 868 votes, 1,000 fewer than her nearest successful opponent.^[8] Bercow is on the approved list of candidates for members of Parliament for the Labour Party and actively campaigned for the election of Ed Balls as leader of the Labour Party. The Daily Telegraph has suggested that Bercow is politicising her husband's neutral role.^[9] John Bercow has rejected this criticism stating "the obligation of impartiality does not apply to my wife who is not my chattel".^[10] Bercow has also appeared on Question Time, with Andy Burnham, Francis Maude and George Galloway, where she was highly critical of the Health and Social Care Bill. Bercow has repeatedly mentioned her desire to become a Labour MP and has revealed that she would like to become the Labour candidate for the marginal Brighton Kemptown seat at the next election, but hinted about concerns over boundary changes turning the seat into a semi-safe Tory seat^[11] however it is said that she is being lined up to stand for Holborn and St Pancras if Frank Dobson retires at the next election.^[12].

Publicity exposure[link]

On 11 November 2010 Bercow appeared as a panelist on the BBC's comedy-news show Have I Got News For You.

On 3 February 2011 she attracted criticism for appearing to capitalise on her husband's position, when a photograph of her wearing only a bed sheet, with the House of Commons in the background, appeared in the London Evening Standard free newspaper.^[13] In the article, she was quoted as saying "becoming Speaker has turned my husband into a sex symbol",^[14] although she later claimed, in a radio interview; "It was just meant to be a bit of fun, but obviously it has completely backfired on me and I look a complete idiot."^[15] The author of a biography of John and Sally Bercow, Bobby Friedman, has claimed that John "read the riot act" to her after the bed sheet photo was published.

On 18 August 2011 Bercow entered the Big Brother House as a housemate on Channel 5's Celebrity Big Brother 2011.^[16] She claimed to have chosen this as her way of 'upsetting the establishment'.^[17] On 26 August she became the first person to be evicted.^[18]

Bercow is currently considering the possibility of being a TV presenter.^[19] In January 2012, Bercow took part in When Paddy Met Sally on Channel 5 with her fellow Big Brother housemate, Paddy Doherty.

She is also a columnist for the Daily Star Sunday ^[20]

She has been an occasional panellist on The Wright Stuff since 2011.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Sally Bercow on Twitter

Interview with Gair Rhydd

Ian Hislop
Hislop in 2009
Born	Ian David Hislop (1960-07-13) 13 July 1960 (age 51) Swansea, Wales
Residence	Sissinghurst, Kent, UK
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Ardingly College Magdalen College, Oxford
Occupation	Magazine editor, screenwriter, journalist, comedian, comedy writer
Employer	Pressdram Ltd Private Eye
Known for	Work on Private Eye & Have I Got News For You
Religion	Anglican
Spouse	Victoria née Hamson (m. 1988) «start: (1988)»"Marriage: Victoria née Hamson to Ian Hislop" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Ian_Hislop)
Children	Emily (b.1990), William (b.1993)

Ian David Hislop (born 13 July 1960) is a British journalist, satirist, comedian, writer, broadcaster and editor of the magazine Private Eye. He has appeared on many radio and television programmes, but is best known as a team captain on the BBC quiz show Have I Got News for You.

Family and early life[link]

Hislop was born on 13 July 1960^[1] in Mumbles, Swansea, to a Scottish father, David Hislop, and a Channel Islander mother of English descent, Helen Rosemarie née Beddows.^[2]

Hislop did not know his grandparents.^[2] His paternal grandfather, David Murdoch Hislop, died just before he was born.^[2] He was Scottish and became a deacon at a Presbyterian church and a school headteacher at Newton Academy in Ayr. In the First World War he fought in Northern France with the 9th (Glasgow Highlanders) Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry.^[2]

Hislop's maternal grandfather, William Beddows, was originally from Lancashire.^[2] He joined the British Army in 1895 and fought in the Second Boer War with the King's Own Royal Regiment, and served in major campaigns including the Battle of Spion Kop.^[2] He moved to Jersey to serve as a Sergeant, having signed up in 1906 for another ten years in the army.^[2]

When he was five months old, Hislop's family began to travel around the world because of his father's job as a civil engineer.^[2] During his infant years, Hislop lived in Nigeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong.^[3] When Hislop was 12 years old his father, David Hislop, died; his mother, who was born in Jersey and had left for Wales in her late teens, died in 1992.^[2] On his return to Britain he was educated at Ardingly College, an independent boarding school, where he became Head Boy,^[3] and began his satirical career directing and appearing in revues alongside Nick Newman.^[3]

Hislop and Newman's association continued when they attended Oxford University together, later working together at Private Eye and on a number of comedy scriptwriting jobs. Hislop applied to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, but changed to English Literature before arriving at Magdalen College. His Oxford tutors included Bernard O'Donoghue, John Fuller and David Norbrook. While at university, Hislop was actively involved in student journalism, and frequently contributed to various student magazines.^[4] He graduated with a BA in 1981.

Career[link]

[edit] Private Eye

At Oxford, Hislop founded and edited the magazine Passing Wind, for which he interviewed Richard Ingrams, who was then editor of Private Eye, and Peter Cook, then the majority shareholder. Hislop's first article appeared in 1980 before he sat his university finals. A parody of The Observer magazine's "Room of My Own" feature, it described an IRA prisoner on the Dirty protest decorating his cell in "fetching brown".^[5] Hislop joined the publication immediately after leaving Oxford, and became editor in 1986 following Ingrams' departure. This met opposition from Eye journalists Peter McKay and Nigel Dempster,^[6] who attempted a revolt against Hislop with the former taking Peter Cook out for lunch in an attempt to dissuade him from appointing Hislop. Cook, reportedly drunk after the lunch, instead announced Hislop was "welcome aboard". The new editor, dismissive of society gossip,^[3] sacked both McKay and Dempster from the magazine without hesitation.^[6]

As editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop is reputedly the most sued man in English legal history,^[7][6] although he is not involved in as many libel actions as he once was.^[8] A libel case was brought against Private Eye and Hislop in 1986 by the publisher Robert Maxwell after the magazine accused him of funding Labour leader Neil Kinnock's travel expenses as a means of gaining a peerage.^[9] After the case Hislop quipped: "I've just given a fat cheque to a fat Czech". Maxwell was revealed to be an extensive fraudster after his death in 1991 illegally drawing on his companies pension funds; his last writ for libel against the Eye and Hislop was about this "malicious" and "mendacious" claim.^[5]

Another libel case in May 1989 threatened the magazine's continued existence when it was ordered to pay £600,000 in damages following an action for libel by Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe. Hislop told reporters waiting outside the High Court: "If that's justice, then I'm a banana." The award was dropped to £60,000 on appeal.^[10] In his many court cases, Hislop has only won twice.^[8]

In an interview with Third Way Magazine in 1995 he explaned his intentions in his work: "Satire is the bringing to ridicule of vice, folly and humbug. All the negatives imply a set of positives. Certainly in this country, you only go round saying, ‘That’s wrong, that’s corrupt’ if you have some feeling that it should be better than that. People say, ‘You satirists attack everything.’ Well, we don’t, actually. That’s the whole point."^[11]

Television and radio work[link]

Hislop's television debut was on the short-lived Channel 4 chat show Loose Talk in 1983, an experience he disliked so much that he included it on his list of most hated items when he first appeared on the BBC show Room 101. Hislop, usually in partnership with Nick Newman, was a screenwriter on the 1980s political satire series Spitting Image, in which puppets were used to depict well-known figures, mostly politicians.^[7] He even had a puppet of himself, which sometimes appeared as a background character in sketches.

Hislop has been team captain on Have I Got News for You since it began airing in 1990. He is the only person to have appeared in every episode of its run, even filming an episode in the seventh series in spite of suffering from appendicitis (he had discharged himself from hospital immediately before the show).^[12]

With regular writing partner Nick Newman Hislop wrote the BBC Radio 4 series Gush, a satire based on the first Gulf War, in the style of Jeffrey Archer. With Newman he also wrote the family-friendly satirical sitcom My Dad's the Prime Minister and in the early nineties for the Dawn French vehicle Murder Most Horrid. Hislop and Newman wrote the Radio 4 series The News At Bedtime, a satire on fairy tales which aired over the 2009 Christmas season. The series starred Jack Dee as 'John Tweedledum' and Peter Capaldi as 'Jim Tweedledee'; the two present the "news of the day" in the world of fairy tales, while arguing with each other as did their namesakes.^[13]

Hislop has also presented serious television programmes. These include School Rules, a three-part Channel 4 study on the history of British education; an edition of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, in which he attempted to trace his ancestry, and Not Forgotten, a four-part series on Channel 4 detailing the impact on British society of the First World War. A further programme, Not Forgotten: Shot at Dawn, was broadcast in January 2007, and a sixth episode, Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight, featuring the stories of conscientious objectors such as Ronald Skirth,^[14] was aired on 10 November 2008. He also presented one episode of the BBC's Great Railway Journeys, in which he travelled in India ("India East to West" from Calcutta to Rajasthan). In May 2007 he presented a programme on BBC Four, Ian Hislop's Scouting for Boys, celebrating Robert Baden-Powell's book which inspired the Scout movement. (He is furthermore an Ambassador for The Scout Association.)^[15] Another BBC Four programme, Ian Hislop Goes Off the Rails, about the Beeching Report and its impact on the British railway network, was first aired on 2 October 2008, and achieved the second highest audience to date for any BBC Four programme (and the highest for a documentary) with 1.3 million viewers.^[16]

Ian Hislop chats to a resident at Nightingale House, London, in 2008.

He has also written and presented factual programmes for Radio 4 about such subjects as tax rebellions, female hymn composers, scouting and patron saints of Britain and Ireland.^[17] In 2007 he became the only person to make a second guest appearance on Room 101. He has also been a comedy screenwriter for Harry Enfield.^[18]

Hislop has presented several programmes for BBC 4, dealing with topics such as the Beeching Axe and the role of the Poet Laureate. The latter, Ian Hislop's Changing of the Bard, launched the May 2009 BBC 4 Poetry season, and Hislop recounted the history of the post from the first official holder, John Dryden, to the then recently announced first female, first Scot and first openly bisexual laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. His series on Victorian social reformers, Ian Hislop's Age of the Do-Gooders, aired on BBC Two beginning on 29 November 2010. His programme on the history of banks, When Bankers were Good, first aired on BBC Two in November 2011, and dealt with famous bankers from history, such as the Rothschilds, the Gurneys and the Lloyds, as well as nineteenth-century philanthropists and reformers such as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Fry.

He has also appeared on Question Time editions (13 times as of September 2010).^[19] In one edition he made an open attack on Jeffrey Archer, who had been imprisoned for perjury, when his wife, Mary Archer, was a fellow panellist. She was noticeably angry that the matter had been raised and harangued Hislop after the recording had finished. In another, he suggested that USA vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was rare among politicians in being good-looking; the laughter from the audience and raised eyebrows from politicians on the panel prompted him to admit to a "gaffe" for which he then apologised.

In 2003 he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.^[20] Hislop also has a career as an after-dinner speaker and awards presenter, working for several speaker bureaux.

Personal life[link]

Ian married Victoria Hamson on 16 April 1988 in Oxford. They have two children, both born in the London borough of Wandsworth: Emily Helen (born 1990) and William David (born 1993) .^[21] They live in Sissinghurst.^[22] Hislop's wife has a career as an author, and in 2010 Hislop played a small role in the Greek television series The Island, which was based on his wife's bestselling novel. The television series premiered on 11 October 2010 on Greece's Mega television channel.

Religious views[link]

In Caroline Chartres' book Why I Am Still an Anglican, Hislop opens his chapter by saying "I've tried atheism and I can't stick at it: I keep having doubts. That probably sums up my position."^[23] In 1996, Hislop presented an award-winning documentary series for Channel 4 about the history of the Church of England, called Canterbury Tales. Recent works of his include the BBC Radio 4 series The Real Patron Saints.

On 4 September 2009, Hislop appeared at the "The Gathering", organised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, at Canterbury Cathedral to discuss religion, society and journalism, among other issues, in front of an audience of about 1,000.^[24][25]

Political views[link]

Hislop has been highly critical of all major British political parties for over 20 years. Appearing on Question Time on 18 September 2008, he praised Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Vince Cable for his analysis of the ongoing economic and financial crisis, and apparently expressed support for the Liberal Democrats, jocularly stating "I'm standing for them."^[26] In a 2009 "Five minutes with" interview with Matthew Stadlen for BBC News, Hislop stated that if he were required, "at the point of a gun", to stand in an election for any British political party, he would stand for the fictional "Vince Cable for Treasurer Party".^[27] After the formation of the coalition government in 2010, Hislop remarked on HIGNFY, "I like the idea of this coalition neutralizing the loonies on both sides".^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

External links[link]

• Debrett's People of Today
• Ian Hislop at the Internet Movie Database
• Ian Hislop interview (Evening Standard)
• "There's no place like Gnome", profile by Nick Greenslade, The Observer, 22 October 2006
• Ian Hislop interviewed by Ciar Byrne for The Independent celebrating his 20th year as editor of Private Eye.
• Ian Hislop: satirist in chief Stephen Moss, guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 September 2011 22.59 BST

Roderick E. L. Liddle (born April 1960) is an English print, radio, and television journalist.

He is an associate editor of The Spectator, and former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he is the author of Too Beautiful for You (2003), Love Will Destroy Everything (2007), and co-author of The Best of Liddle Britain (2007). He has presented several television programmes, including The New Fundamentalists, The Trouble with Atheism, and Immigration Is A Time Bomb.

Liddle began his career at the South Wales Echo, then worked for the Labour Party, and later joined the BBC. He become editor of Today in 1998, resigning in 2002 after his employers objected to one of his articles in The Guardian. He has also written for The Sunday Times and The Sun among other publications.

His comments regularly cause controversy in the media, and his acrimonious divorce in 2004 from Rachel Royce received much attention. He was accused of racism for making remarks about the African-Caribbean community and for the content of his posts to an online forum. A November 2011 article by Liddle in The Spectator about the trial of two individuals involved in the murder of Stephen Lawrence led to a decision to prosecute the magazine for breaching reporting restrictions. A court hearing will be held in June 2012.^[2]

Early life and education[link]

Liddle was born in Abbey Wood, south London, the son of a train driver. From the age of eight, he was brought up in Nunthorpe, a suburb of Middlesbrough, in north east England.

He was educated at the comprehensive Laurence Jackson School in nearby Guisborough and the adjacent sixth form college, where he formed a punk band called Dangerbird.

He attended the London School of Economics (LSE) as a mature student, where he read Social Psychology.^[3][4]

Career[link]

His early career in journalism was with the South Wales Echo in Cardiff where he was a general news reporter and, for a time, the rock and pop writer. He was a member of the Socialist Workers Party in his early youth, but worked between 1983 and 1987 as a speechwriter and researcher for the Labour Party.^[5]

BBC[link]

He returned to journalism after graduating from the LSE, and was taken on as a trainee producer by the BBC.^[3] Liddle was appointed editor of the Today programme in 1998.^[6] The programme had an unrivalled reputation for its political interviews, but Liddle tried, with considerable success, to improve the programme's investigative journalism. To this end he hired journalists from outside the BBC. Among the most controversial was Andrew Gilligan, who joined from The Sunday Telegraph in 1999. Gilligan's 29 May 2003 report on Today—that the British government had "sexed up" the intelligence dossier on Iraq, a report broadcast after Liddle had left the programme—began a chain of events that included the death in July that year of David Kelly, the weapons inspector who was Gilligan's source, and the subsequent Hutton Inquiry, a public inquiry into the circumstances of Kelly's death. Liddle defended Gilligan throughout the controversy.^[7]

Under Liddle's 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, an investigation that attracted a lengthy legal action.

While working for Today, Liddle also wrote a column for The Guardian. On 25 September 2002, referring to a march organized by the Countryside Alliance in defence of fox hunting, Liddle wrote that readers may have forgotten why they voted Labour in 1997, but would remember once they saw the people campaigning to save hunting.^[8] His column led The Daily Telegraph to accuse Liddle of bias and of endangering democracy.^[9] The BBC concluded that Liddle's comments breached his commitment to impartiality as a BBC editor, and gave him an ultimatum to stop writing his column or resign from his position on Today. He resigned on 30 September 2002.^[10] He said later that when he was editor he was ordered by BBC management to sack Frederick Forsyth from the show, and speculated that it was because of Forsyth's rightwing political views.^[11] The BBC replied that the decision was made for editorial reasons.^[12]

[edit] The Spectator

With Kate Silverton he presented the short-lived BBC2 political show Weekend—described by The Independent on Sunday as "The worst programme anywhere, ever, in the history of time"—and BBC4's The Talk Show. He continued to write for The Guardian, and became a team captain on Call My Bluff. He became an associate editor with The Spectator. He also writes for the men's magazines, GQ and Arena, and a weekly column for The Sunday Times.^[3]

Controversies[link]

In August 2009, in his Spectator blog he wrote about Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party, in unflattering terms. Liddle began the article by asking: "So — Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober."^[13] Liddle asserted two months later: "It was supposed to be a parody of guttural, base sexism", a joke he assumed readers would understand. Surprised by a negative response from a number of female journalists he continued: "And then I suppose I came to the conclusion - gradually - that I must have got it wrong."^[14]

In November 2009, again for The Spectator website, he offered "a quick update on what the Muslim savages are up to," a brief article about the stoning to death of a 20-year-old woman in Somalia after she was accused of adultery, and the similar death of a 13-year-old the year before. He made remarks, considered sarcastic, that read: "Incidentally, many Somalis have come to Britain as immigrants recently, where they are widely admired for their strong work ethic, respect for the law and keen, piercing, intelligence."^[15][16]

In December 2009, on his Spectator blog, Liddle referred to two black music producers, Brandon Jolie and Kingsley Ogundele, who had plotted to kill Jolie's 15-year-old pregnant girlfriend, as "human filth" and said the incident was not an anomaly. He continued:

The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community. Of course, in return, we have rap music, goat curry and a far more vibrant and diverse understanding of cultures which were once alien to us. For which, many thanks.^[17]

When he was accused of racism, Liddle said he was instead engaging in a debate about multiculturalism.^[18][19] In March 2010 the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) upheld a complaint against Liddle, who became the first journalist to be censured over the contents of a blog, because he had not been able to prove his claim about the crime statistics.^[20] After the publication of London crime figures in June 2010, The Sunday Telegraph suggested Liddle was largely right on some of his claims, but that he was probably wrong on his claims about knife crimes and violent sex crimes.^[21]

In January 2010, the Mail on Sunday and The Observer drew attention to allegedly racist and misogynist comments posted under the username "monkeymfc"—a name Liddle has used—on Millwall Online, a fan club web forum with no official connection to the Millwall Football Club. Liddle at first attributed some of the comments to opposition fans logging in under his name to embarrass him. He later admitted he had written some of the posts that were being criticized, including one in support of the BNP excluding Black and Asian people from the party.^[22] Another post, in which he joked about not being able to smoke at Auschwitz, led to his being forced to explain what he meant in The Jewish Chronicle.^[23]

The Guardian reported on 8 January 2010 that the expected purchase of The Independent by Alexander Lebedev, a Russian billionaire, would be followed by the appointment of Liddle as editor.^[24] Roy Greenslade wrote on 11 January that the reports were provoking a "major internal and external revolt" by The Independent's staff and readers.^[25] The stories about Liddle's posts on Millwall Online apparently further reduced the likelihood of him being offered the job.^[23] Finally, on 19 February, Stephen Brook of The Guardian reported that Liddle was no longer in the running for the post.^[26] Tim Luckhurst, Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent, argued that Liddle's chance of editing The Independent was removed "by the people behind a viciously intolerant campaign of liberal bigotry".^[27]

In November 2011 an article^[28] by Liddle for The Spectator suggested the trial of two men accused (and later convicted) of murdering Stephen Lawrence would not be fair. It was referred to the Attorney General (Dominic Grieve) by the judge for possible contempt of court,^[29] and he ordered the jurors not to read it. Having decided that it may have breached a court order, Grieve passed the case on to the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions.^[30] The decision that The Spectator is to be prosecuted by the CPS for breaching reporting restrictions was announced on 9 May, with a court hearing scheduled for 7 June 2012, although Liddle as the author is not himself liable for prosecution.^[2] Fraser Nelson, the magazine's editor, has announced that the prosecution will not be contested.^[31]

In January 2012 Liddle claimed that many people in the UK were "pretending to be disabled" in his column for The Sun,^[32] an opinion defended by James Delingpole who thought "Rod's point is well made".^[33]

Political views[link]

Liddle is a member of the Labour Party.^[1] His political views are sometimes questioned by those on both left and right.^[34][35] He stated his beliefs on his Spectator blog:

I'm not sure why it puzzles people, although I assume it’s something to do with what the Labour Party has become. I am pretty much of the left, but loathe the censoriousness, arrogance, self-righteousness and political correctness of the left, or London faux-left, as I would describe it. I sign up to most of the stuff which used to be considered left – decent minimum wage, redistributive tax policy, social ownership of those things which as a society we need but which the market struggles to provide (trains, utilities, council housing and the like). My worries about immigration, meanwhile, are twofold; that as a country we have become too crowded, and that the free movement of labour has made it harder for indigenous working class people to earn a decent wage, rent a decent house, get their kids educated in schools where the other kids speak the same language and so on and so on. My dislike of multiculturalism stems not simply from the belief that competing cultures undermine a sense of national identity and shared aspiration, but that some of the cultures we have encouraged, or made allowances for, are profoundly illiberal and penalize the most vulnerable sectors of society. And when that happens – either with the more rigorous strictures of Islam, or the low educational achievement and predilection towards crime of young African Caribbean men (© Diane Abbott), we should say so, and say so forcefully. I suppose on these latter points it has largely been the right-wing doing most of the running – but I do not see why it is right wing per se to object to the authoritarianism of Islam, or a culture which leads black kids towards crime. Quite the reverse, I would have thought. But there we are. I hope this has helped.^[36]

He said in 2009: "I got a reputation three or four years ago for being very right wing. This was always bollocks, I've never been right wing", and that "The truth is I'm a fundamentalist liberal, I'm probably worse than all those other people." He is a critic of Islam, and sees the religion as oppressive. However, he says it is the Christians who are more offended by his views: "When I write things about Islam I get letters and emails from Muslims, which with great politeness and erudition explain why they think I'm wrong and wish me the best. When I write about evangelical Christianity I get death threats, I get told that I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity and so are all my children."^[37]

Television[link]

[edit] The New Fundamentalists

In The New Fundamentalists, a programme in the Dispatches strand broadcast in March 2006, Liddle, a member of the Church of England, condemned the rise of evangelicalism and Christian fundamentalism in Britain, especially the anti-Darwinian influence of such beliefs in faith schools; and criticised the social teaching and cultural influence of this strand of Christianity. The documentary was criticised by David Hilborn of the Evangelical Alliance,^[38] and by Rupert Kaye of the Association of Christian Teachers.^[39]

[edit] The Trouble with Atheism

In The Trouble with Atheism, Liddle argued that atheists can be as dogmatic and intolerant as the adherents of religion. Liddle said, "History has shown us that it's not religion that's the problem, but any system of thought that insists that one group of people are inviolably in the right, whereas the others are in the wrong and must somehow be punished."^[40] Liddle argues, for example, that eugenic policies are the logical consequence of dogmatic adherence to Darwinism.

[edit] Immigration Is A Time Bomb

Liddle's Immigration Is A Time Bomb was broadcast by Channel 4 in 2005. The complaints that followed it included that he should not have allowed British National Party leader Nick Griffin to speak unchallenged. Ofcom adjudicated that the programme was fair, and the complaints were dismissed. Liddle subsequently argued, after Griffin was acquitted in February 2006 of two charges of inciting racial hatred, that the charges were "too ephemeral, too dependent upon the mindset and political disposition of the juror, and upon what is happening outside of the courtroom, on the streets."^[41]

Other work[link]

In April 2007, Liddle presented a two-hour long theological documentary called The Bible Revolution where he looked back in history to William Tyndale's translation of the Bible in English and the effect this had upon the English language.^[42] On 21 May 2007, he presented an hour long documentary, Battle for the Holy Land: Love Thy Neighbour, about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. He visited Bethlehem, Hebron and the Israeli settlement of Tekoa. Liddle sought to examine whether Israel was a true liberal democracy in light of its treatment of the Palestinians. He also appeared in Channel 4's alternative election night episode of Come Dine With Me along with Edwina Curry, Derek Hatton and Brian Paddick. He surprised his fellow guests by serving jerk chicken sourced from a halal butcher.

In 2003 Liddle wrote a collection of short stories, Too Beautiful For You.^[43] He said he has always wanted to be a writer, and saw journalism as a cop-out.^[7] He is also the author of Love Will Destroy Everything (2007) and the co-author of The Best of Liddle Britain (2007).

Personal life[link]

Liddle married his longtime partner, Rachel Royce, a television presenter, in January 2004 at a ceremony in Malaysia. They had been living in Heytesbury, Wiltshire, and had two sons together, Tyler and Wilder.^[44] Six months later, Liddle moved in with Alicia Monckton, a 22-year-old receptionist at The Spectator. It transpired that he had cut his honeymoon with Royce short so that he could be with Monckton. Following their divorce, Liddle and Royce exchanged attacks in the media. Liddle called her a "total slut and slattern", and Royce wrote an article in the Daily Mail titled "My cheating husband Rod, 10 bags of manure and me the bunny boiler. As for The Slapper... she's welcome to him".^[45] As of 2011 Royce was still writing about her ex-husband in the Mail.^[46] On 5 May 2005, he was arrested for common assault against Monckton, who was 20 weeks pregnant at the time. He admitted the offence and accepted a police caution, but said later that he only did so because it was the quickest way for him to be released, and that he had not assaulted her.^[47] The couple's daughter, Emmeline, named after the suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst, was born in October 2005.^[14] The couple married in September 2008.^[48]

Liddle has supported Millwall Football Club since the age of seven. He frequently attends home and away games. He has written several articles lamenting the demise of football as the people's game.^[49]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Spectator blog
• Profile at The Guardian
• Articles written by Rod Liddle at The Spectator