...but there's a well-known advantage given to people on a stage who get heckled: THEY'VE got the microphone. Ditto, Elz & Heppo - THEY'VE got the print platform and the editorial discretion. As a legendary editor himself, Rod should know the way the game works - and know any comment on the matter is likely to end up in print, hoisting him by his own petulent petard.

He should also know that ANYONE who is a photo-byline columnist (like, er, Andrew Collins) is, as their virtual job description and raison d'etre, a professional controversialist. That means other people can - indeed, are actively sought to - express their counter views on that individual and/or what they have to say. It's the lifeblood of selling papers. If Rod reacts so sourly and disproportionately to what was clearly no more than a bit of lightweight lampoonery from his peers, of the kind that surely comes as part and parcel of his columnist path in life, it reflects pretty poorly on him. No?

the inclusion of a middle ranking newspaper columnist on a list of people who have acheived a lot with very little ability was incongrous at best and reeked of a vendetta.

It was like HIGNFY spending an entire half hour attacking Michelle Hanson (although that would be interesting). It makes no sense to those of us who aren't part of medialand.

Liddle was Iraq war apologist - and so was I at the time - and received nothing like the opprobrium he's getting from the Word boys for that he's getting now.

I'm interested in the back story.

His name on a list tucked away at the side of a page, created as essentially something to amuse? I don't think he has been singled out any more than anyone else and he always seems someone more than capable of defending his own position. I only know him for being sacked from Today on Radio 4 and turning up on panel things like Question Time.

I agree there may be more to this but surely that's the sort of stuff best left to gossip columns. He said sniffishly.

but I like gossip and conjecture.

His name lept out at me like an incongrous tiger. It's like a list of "Aresholes We Hate" in a national newspaper which mysteriously featured the man two doors down who spends his free time thumping footballs off his back wall (you know who you are you bastard!) in the company of Robert Mugabe and Thaksin Sinawatra.

I enjoy frivolous gossip. Let it be unconfined.

If he was not a journalist on a well-heeled rag he would be handing out leaflets in the street, printed with the words...

"I'm Rod Liddle. Look at me. Me me me me me"

Messrs Hepworth & Ellen on the other hand could cope without the fame and adulation that comes with putting a magazine to bed every month, fitting nicely into the role of visiting professor at Wigan University, lecturing on Media, Arts and obscure record sleeves, or the pub-rock circuit as a full-time Love Trouser.

In real life Rod might be a nice bloke. Or not.

From here on in, surely Rod Liddle should be known as Rod Lidl?

Maybe sufficient time has gone by to reveal the truth, abhorrent tho' it undoubtedly is. Back in the days when electricity was but a flicker in the inventors eye, my parents, in the interests of character formation, and because we only had warm water at home, sent me away to finishing school, at Piddle College, so named after it's founding father, and first and only headmaster, Sir Robert ("Rabid") Piddle. This short-lived experiment in totalitarian education was known more for it's brutal disregard of even the casual violence of the private education sector, beating a indelible hatred of the pooor and deprived into its sons. Eschewing his own past as a barefoot slumdweller in High Wycombe, Sir Rab, took especial delight in his victimisation of those pupils he felt to be "common". I had the misfortune, along with "Hoppy" Hepworth and "Betty" Ellen, of taking the brunt of his frenzied thrashings, mainly because our fathers were all blessed with fine heads of hair. For the Piddles, down to the last man, were all totally bald, even his son, the hated head boy, apple of his father's eye, Rodney......
(to be continued....)

...said Captain Mainwaring. On the other hand, Retro may well have discovered a cache of memoirs in a tin box, blown the dust off the lid and found a label which reads 'Sir Hepworth of Rawlinson End', detailing a lifetime of simmering public-school spats with Head Boy 'Don't Spare The' Rod Liddle...

But I do agree with the 'Opprobrium? What opprobrium?' comment above. The list of long-way-on-a-little was, from vague memory (see? we'd ALL have forgotten about it if Rod hadn't gone OTT) a passing amusement on a series of public figures who should be aware that their position as public figures means the public, and their peers, have a perfect right to question their position. It's part of the territory. If you can't stand the heat, etc etc...

Now, if Goat had compiled that list in stuck in 'that bloke two doors down and his bloody football' - or, indeed, if I had compiled the list and thrown in 'that bastard with the Fred Flintstone voice whose garden backs onto mine and takes 100decibel mobile phone calls in his garden at midnight' - then, yes, we might all suspect that some personal ire was being vented.

What I can't understand is why Sid Little wasn't in there (puns notwithstanding). As Clive James once put it: 'His schtick is too look like he's just standing there. But the trouble is, he IS just standing there.'