Rod Liddle

A number of readers have already suggested I "write up" Rod Liddle. I've never been sure where I stood on his very extreme 'strengths and weaknesses'.  His ability to confuse and confound will continue after a very untimely death. 

Let's add some odd notes to the record. Keith Flett, a contemporary in Middlesborough, thinks his teenage interest in the SWP was really to get gigs for his punk group Dangerbird under the Rock Against Racism umbrella. At the other end of his life, his death has been mourned by Nigel Farage, Darren Grimes, Dan Wootton, Kevin O'Sullivan and Ross Kemp. 

He was certainly a different voice when he arrived at the BBC after three years at the South Wales Echo, and three years working for the Labour Party, whilst also taking a degree (a wank degree?) in social psychology at the LSE. His accent, bearing the London twangs of Sidcup, embedded til nine years old, mangled with years in Nunthorpe, was different, and, depending on the meeting, profanities were abundant. I have to say, in his early years, not much of his iconclasm made it to air on programmes like The World This Weekend. When I shared a brief time with him on Today, as another assistant editor, he was attracted to any newspaper story headlined "Village of Fear", and like another Mad Rod before him (Rod Pounsett) drove hard to get the people at the heart of stories to, at least, a phone interview.  Often, these stories were in The Daily Mail. 

Management wanted to 'develop' Rod. They sent him to edit The World Tonight, which passed without alarum, before letting him run Today. The programme was well staffed, and Rod began to enjoy "off-the wall" appointments at reporter and junior producer level. He also began to enjoy the slight celebrity the role brought. The problem was that you couldn't see a further promotion ahead; the change of career to columnist and controversialist might even been concocted by friends in management. 

As he launched into this part of his 'journey', let's remember there were regular appearances on "Call My Bluff", relaunched with Fiona Bruce; a forgotten Sunday morning yoof politics show with Kate Silverton on BBC2; and many panel show appearances on Radio 4. One suspects his circle of chums drove him to believe there was more money in expressing deliberately contrarian views in newspaper columns. He was certainly better at it. 

Age, red wine and cigarettes puffed Rod up from a John Cooper Clarke into a Frankie Howerd. In recent years he returned to the North East, shared recipes for pease pudding, and walked and walked with his dog. Trips to London, in hotels, for News International's shilling, were loucher.  His chosen party, the 'continuity' SDP, allegedly conservative-left, made pacts with Reform UK.

It was hard to tell whether and when he meant what he wrote. Often, with extreme leery Benny Hill-ery, he just made your jaw drop. In later years he repeated the belief that Clause 28 was 'right', that the abortion debate should still be a live issue, and that the BBC was consistently beastly to Israel. He was nostalgic for life as a teenager in Nunthorpe, and wanted some form of return to the values of those times; or did he ?

The Crown

Huw 'Dylan' Edwards has shared a long poem on his Substack site, in Welsh and English. 1015 words in Welsh, 1213 in English. 

It's on this year's theme set by the National Eisteddfod for the Bardic Poetry Crown - Achnabod, translated variously as 'Recognition' or 'Knowing'. Huw heads his Substack posting "Knowing Me, Knowing You, Ahaa"

Following tradition, Huw has given himself a pseudonym, Gelyn, which Huw translates as 'Enemy'. 'Foe' would be an alternative.  But has he actually entered in the competition ?

Two years ago, following a unanimous vote at the Eisteddfod Court meeting, the Board of Trustees terminated Huw Edwards' membership of the Eisteddfod and expelled him from Gorsedd Cymru, an honour bestowed in 2022.  The rules of the poetry competition demand that the judges make their decision without knowing the identity of the entrants, though the organisers do.  We'll know the winner at 4pm this afternoon. Has Huw made the journey to Llantwd ?

I'll see your 'busted flush' and....

One hopes there's some creative thinking going on at the Treasury. If the licence fee is a 'busted flush', they'll need to come up with a viable alternative, that can be supported and sold. 

Whatever options appear in the White Paper, most of the papers will condemn them as a 'tv tax'.  The OBR already count funds raised through the licence fee as a tax, so the problem is not a huge change in the burden of taxation, it's the difference between a fixed impost and "progressive taxation" as called for this week by Rebecca Long Bailey. 

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has previously rejected the idea of adding it to Council Tax, but the BBC still thinks it's a good idea. It's possible Lisa's been briefed on Burnham's Deepest Thoughts, and that Labour may risk real changes to the current system of supporting the work of local councils, the police and fire services.  I think, if Council Tax stays as it is, there's a risk of "BBC Avoidance" tying up magistrates' courts event more than with the licence fee; there could well be a politically-driven, newspaper supported campaign to leave the BBC precept out of people's payments, at least to tie up collection resources. 

As ever, I will mention my view that something could be raised on the back of the means of delivery; in this case a levy on broadband providers. They are not 'licenced' by Ofcom, but subject to a General Authorisation.  The Government currently 'gives' to the broadband companies by supporting Project Gigabit to the tune of £5bn up to 2032, but also takes away from the providers by charging business rates on some of their infrastructure. They all claim hardship, but a levy collected via their bills would at least have some relationship with media consumption in the future. 

Implications

I know it's hot, late and August, but I feel there could be more analysis on the BBC website of the Manchester mayoral election results. OK so only 500,000 voted, but that's still 250 times the size of an average opinion poll.... 

D listed

BBC Entertainment have unveiled their contribution to the current savings target - by axing Blankety Blank, Live at the Apollo and Celebrity Mastermind.  The logic must be that they can be replaced in schedules by something cheaper, or perhaps just more repeats. 

Another driver might be the risk of a report to some sort of media Trading Standards body for misuse of 'celebrity'.   This was the cast list for the 2025/6 series. Clive has already recorded the 2026/7 series - will it be any better ? 

Maryam Moshiri
Chesney Hawkes
Desiree Burch
Danny Robins

Sally Ann Matthews
Yinka Bokinni
Felicity Ward
Michael Bradley

Gareth Malone
Gamba Cole
Yewande Biala
Lucy Beaumont

Will Best
Laura Smyth
Nikita Kuzmin
Jayne Wisener
Matt Edmondson
Sonnaz Nooranvary
Lewis Goodall

Dean Franklin
Chloe Petts
Ashley John-Baptiste
Robyn Cowen

Iwan Thomas
Sophie Aldred
Mobeen Azhar
Ashley James

Tia Kofi
Lauren Patel
Josh Jones
Izzie Balmer

Charlotte Hawkins
Stephen Bailey
Ekow Quartey
Belles Berry

Colson Smith
Nadia Jae
Grace Campbell
Joel M

Alexander Dragonetti
Janine Harouni
Laura Davies
Greg McHugh

JB Gill
Susie McCabe
Lucy Shepherd
Richie Anderson 

James Cracknell
Jen Brister
Craig Rowe
Bradley Riches

Stuart Pearce
Gemma Cairney
Axel Blake
Phil Dunning

The cancellation is also a loss to out-of-London, with all episodes recorded in Belfast.

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Not quite global

A tweet from the BBC's Ione Wells (St Pauls, Marlborough and Keble, Oxford) "Some news: I’m moving to Washington this autumn to become a BBC North America Correspondent.

I’ll have been the BBC’s last South America correspondent as my post is closing in the cuts."

This is where I just don't get the BBC's Global Strategy.  Can you zoom to the top in the USA's news providers without a correspondent in South America ?  I thought that Hispanics and Latinos made up 1 in 5 of the US population. Do leaders like Jonathan Munro and Richard Burgess actually believe South America is unimportant ?

 

Capital days

5Live seems to have found a reasonably elegant way of shuffing presenters, with Rachel Burden effectively swapping with Naga Munchetty at the end of this year. I have a suspicion that there's some money-saving ahead, with Naga being lined up with a slightly less expensive male host than Rick Edwards. 

And the move is less Salford-positive than Andy Burnham or Lisa Nandy might like. Naga will be allowed to stay in London for two of her five days a week. So that's Naga, Nicky Campbell and Matt Chorley all with London dispensations. 

Consultants

From a Freedom of Information enquiry to the BBC:

Please provide the name of every external consultancy or advisory firm paid more than £50,000 in the financial year 2024–25 for work unrelated to broadcast production or technology infrastructure, and state the total amount paid to each.

By way of context, please note the BBC has traditionally used consultancies on an ad hoc basis when external expertise and experience are required for specific projects. However, in April 2026 the BBC announced the introduction of immediate cost control measures across the corporation, including cutting management consultancy spend, as part of savings required over the next three years. 

Playground stuff

I really hope the next Director of BBC News has a different view on the use of the word 'exclusive'. It arrived with Munro/Turness/McAndrew, and today has been liberally applied to Laura Kuenssberg's interview with Andy Burnham. Perish the thought that a new Prime Minister might grant an early interview to a national broadcaster without much rugged application of dogged journalism. Of course, we as licence payers are being excluded from hearing the full interview until 6.00am Monday on iPlayer, whilst the newsgathering controllers graciously drop clips here and there. 

Maybe we can 'Verify' just how 'exclusive' it is....

EXCLUSIVE: Prime Minister @andyburnham speaks to the Manchester Evening News following historic first day at Number 10 North https://t.co/om6LGhguxt

— Manchester News MEN (@MENnewsdesk) July 25, 2026

Karma ?

The BBC has shown pretty much wall-to-wall live coverage of every Commonwealth Games hosted in the UK since 1970.  Until now. 

Back in December, the BBC said it was 'unable to match' the bid from TNT Sports to cover the shortened Glasgow games. TNT Sports said it would show more than 600 hours of live coverage in a "re-imagining" of the games, featuring ten sports and six para sports.  So TNT Sports 2 is 'live' from 8:30am to 10:30pm, and the Games are also streaming on HBO Max.  

In May it was announced that Channel 5 had won the competitive tender to run the daily highlights show  at 10:30pm.  'Live coverage' is also available on BBC Alba every evening from 5.30pm. And there's around two hours each evening on S4C. 

Some viewers complained that the entry of the athletes in last night's opening ceremony coverage on 5 was interrupted by a large wodge of adverts; presumably BBC Studios weren't able to copyright the police phone box that delivered King 'Dr' Charles to the OVO stadium.  The ceremony averaged 800k viewers on Channel 5, plus another 50k on TNTSports2; no figures ever seem to come out for BBC Alba. 

In July 2022, the opening ceremony in Birmingham, featuring Duran Duran, Tony Iommi and a 10m tall mechanised bull, was watched by an average of 4.6m across three and a half hours.