you are thinking of is Mark Steele - and he's not a fake cockney. I do believe he's the genuine article. His book on the French Revolution is a very good read.

BTW - Having read some comments on the Guardian website I do sometimes wonder how many of them are of the genteel lentil eating brigade. The vitriol poured out following an article on Jeremy Beadle was frightning.

Are you serious that you read and enjoy Richard Littlejohn?

Would suggest Francis Wheen - not sure on the politics but he seems to have an ecxcellent perspective on most things.

He's your man

Another vote for Francis Wheen.
Not exactly up to date, but the 4 volumes of George Orwell's Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters are a very good read.

Would that be the politically incisive 'To Hell in a Handcart'?
After that you'll be needing some Gary Bushell.

....is that "us" G-reading lefties enjoy the guilty pleasure of opinions that all poor people should be burnt and the like. It probably reminds us of the opinions told us at our, invariably, priveliged schools. Prefer an educated bigot to the Richard Littlejohn variety.

is Ben Elton - Sorry but the guy cant write to save his life. He is also about as funny as a boil on your arse.

I would consider myself definitely to the left but also think for example that PJ O'Rourke is much more entertaining that Michael Moore. Left leaning writers in the main seem to be too earnest.

Having bookshelves full of pompous self regarding right wing twits is a little worrying Richard and I'm not surprised you have asked for help.

Jeremy Clarkson particularly grates on me. Sneery and rude and smug. Who needs it. Boris Johnson is a buffoon, but can be funny - I remember a TV show where Billy Bragg took him around Glastonbury which was very very amusing.

Current leftie analysis does tend towards the slightly dull and worthy. Although I always read Naomi Klein, whose not always right but always thought provoking. For a dose of comedy with your establishment pricking (and adolescent humour) go for Charlie Booker in the Guardian. I think he's great, if a tad childish. And in terms of fiction try Christopher Brookmyre. Or even Carl Hiaason. Both are always having a pop at the establishment and as an added bonus both writers love their r n r as well.

Which "establishment" would that be? The old one made up of upper-class "right wing twits" that's hasn't really held sway for about 50 years, or the current liberal lefty one that runs the media, the education system, the police, the Church of England, the judicial system and, of course, the government, both national and European.?

Richard Richard Richard, you're sicker than I thought.

Just as a starter - the establishment that wastes thousands of lives in a pointless war in Iraq.

And I'm not sure whether the media is run by left leaning liberals , or that the national curriculum is a model of liberalism. Or that the Church of England is full of marxists or that the police are going to use the new sus laws in a"politically correct" manner.

Still I would keep reading the same old books if I were you. They clearly are expanding your mind and opening doors to new ideas. Not at all pandering to right wing delusions.

Congratulations Richard! Having mentioned the 'liberal lefty' establishment who supposedly control our lives, you have won five pounds and a subscription to the Spectator. Have you met any real newspaper editors, senior church officials, judges or police officers recently?
As an aside, I'm a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party and never took us to be either hard left of centre or controlling things in this country. Shame about the latter, but we're working on it. Might be that 'liberal' as a term of abuse thing creeping over here from the states, as used by Jack Straw not so long ago.
Must go, have swan-eating asylum seekers to house at the expense of honest-to goodness grannies who lived through the blitz. And other trolls to feed.

...and it opened at a passage where the writer complained about the appalling behaviour of "a Jewess" on the London Underground and went on to make some rather unflattering points about Jews as a race, the kind of points that no newspaper in the UK would publish nowadays. I might think that it would have been better had the writer not said them but I don't dismiss him because of what he said.
And not just because his name was George Orwell.
I mention this because surely there's nothing more pointless than reading a columnist because his views happens to chime with yours. You may as well talk to yourself.
I like Clarkson because he's rarely dull. I hardly ever agree with him. Actually the best columnists are the ones who write in such a way that you don't know what their political orientation is.

I'm a leftie who works in the media - not for whom you'd think - and I too fail to spot the liberal cabal who dictate our lives and set the overarching political agenda. I kinda side with Marcuse and the 'repressive tolerance' theory, as opposed to some mythical socialist lingua franca being disseminated by such crypto-Trots as Dickie Desmond.

And as for an Old Etonian background being a handicap....my kerrrrrist, are you serious, Richard?! Trying getting a job on the Telegraph without one.....pace Beano Boris and his coterie of friends and rellies who have churned out wodges of Woostersque copy there. I absolve the hard-pressed subs, of course. If it is such a handciap, then how come half of the shadow cabinet are Old Boys then? Probably easier to grab a safe seat then if you're the scion of a Saltburn steel worker, I'd aver.

Back on topic - much to the chagrin of my comrades at arms, I do think Littlejohn is a decent writer , tho Hell in a Handcart was irredeemable guff and, as the usually otiose Aaronavitch pointed out, is a 600-page recruitment ad for the BNP. Mind you, Bushell was a far better prose stylist back in the day - admirably tendentious, Chandleresque and scabrously witty. Shame about the intervening years.....

Theodore Dalrymple, who writes also as Anthony Daniels, is a fine writer. A good polemicist, his travel books , especially , the Wilder Shores of Marx, are interesting reads and not your standard travel fare. He reads like an angry and indignant PJ O´Rourke, without the jokes. I don´t really care for a person´s politics when it comes to choosing what to read. I would consider myself left-leaning but I can´t imagine anything worse than only reading left-wing authors. I know a lot of people like their writers or indeed musicians to chime with their own views, but me, I like to be challenged. Both Joey Ramone and John Malkovich are said to have had right-wing tendencies but it doesn´t really matter now , does it ? There ain´t no such thing as politically incorrect, it´s a just a difference of opinion

Much as I'd like to pretend otherwise, a columnist's political leanings do influence my enjoyment of them. It's not to say I cannot read with pleasure someone whose opinions are widely divergent from my own, or, even less, that I always enjoy those whose views I broadly share. However, if A Columnist was always banging on about how taxes should be abolished, immigrants are scum, cycle lanes should be abolished, and controls on pollution done away with, etc etc - I'd probably stop reading them, even if they wrote well.

So, I'm broadly liberal/leftie; the columnists I really admire and always make a point of reading are George Monbiot and Naomi Klein, whose political views are nailed to the mast. On the other hand, I don't enjoy, say, Polly Toynbee or Nick Cohen (although it's arguable that the latter has transmogrified into a hard-right liberal basher). I enjoy Brian Sewell's columns on the rare occasions I come across them, though I can't stand the cut of his jib in many ways.

So, it's a combination of where they're coming from and how they express themselves - and it's a very inexact science.

Incidentally, am I the only one who occasionally wonders whether Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear/scourge of the environment persona is something of a hoax? He could almost have been computer generated to infuriate People Like Me: environment? He's against it. Cars? The more the better. Concerns over ID cards? Liberal mithering. Civil liberties? Politically correct nonsense. I reckon he's puttin' us on.

entertaining and engaging I would read it. But I agree leftist ones are harder to think of. Charlie Brooker - not really especially affiliated but well worth a read. A right wing view might appeal to me on some issues, a left one on others (eg Iraq - for me). Don't really want to read when it's against what I believe unless there's some wit there. It seems it's a lot of grumpy old men and women these days. Word columns are good examples of what I like but not often too contentious - excepton the religious music thing, that was interesting. I would mention Bill Hicks - a genius, brilliant and funny. No longer with us sadly. Not exactly a writer in the normal sense I suppose, but great.

On the Fence the "right-wing" Ramone was the late Johnny and not the late Joey. I don't think Dee Dee was that fussed...

CB as mentioned above is not really affiliated with left or right as far as I can tell but his rants are always worth a go - he is a younger but grumpier grumpy old man. Bitter and twisted sometimes but always with an ability to cut through the crap.

A younger, more cynical, more nasty minded David Hepworth might I suggest - and this just to clarify - I have snorted tea through my nose (in a rather joyous way) while listening to them both! Though not at the same time. Obviously.