I remember being in The Spectator’s offices on a Tuesday afternoon not long ago when I noticed a group of staffers clustered round a computer screen. One let out a guffaw of laughter, followed by another, then another. People sitting nearby demanded to know what was so funny and someone started reading it out. Before long, the entire room was roaring with laughter – proper, hysterical, uncontrollable laughter. Rod Liddle had filed his column.
I was envious, obviously, but also laughing with everybody else. Rod was one of those writers it was impossible to dislike, however successful he became, because reading him gave you so much pleasure. That was true even if you didn’t share his politics, provided you had a sense of humour. (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and George Monbiot were not fans.) I remember him grumbling to me that Fraser Nelson, our then boss, had assembled a group of young staffers to vet his columns, a sort of Spectator version of sensitivity readers. This crew became known as the ‘Snow Patrol’ and were the target of many a vituperative barb in Rod’s internal messages. But he needn’t have worried. They loved his writing as much as everyone else and he was never asked to change a word.
