Columnist offers to usher Brightonians to the edge of Beachy Head

The outspoken journalist, 56, took aim at the city following last week’s Sats protest in two pieces for The Spectator and The Sun.

Describing Brighton as the place where everything bad in the world comes from, he said its residents were “dumb little hobbits” who live in “debauched and smug little bijou seaside residences”.

He added: “Hell, if the people of Brighton can’t be a**ed to make the short journey to Beachy Head, I would pay towards having Beachy Head transported to Brighton, so that it is even handier for them, and personally chaperone them towards the precipitous edge.”

But Brightonians have hit back at the London-born writer, describing him as a has-been hack suffering a mid-life crisis.

Argus columnist Adam Trimingham urged readers to treat him with the tolerance he appears to so much dislike.

He said: “He is a controversialist, following in the well-worn footsteps of Julie Burchill and Auberon Waugh. What he wants is people to be outraged.

“The best reaction is to regard him with the wry tolerance that is Brighton’s trademark. Without the frantic fervour he expects, Liddle may be tempted to visit Beachy Head himself.

“Alternatively he might decide, like Julie, to come and live in the city he professes to despise so much where he will be welcomed as one of its many mildly amusing but insignificant characters.”

Peter Kyle, MP for Hove, said Liddle’s piece is more offensive in its banality than substance.

He said: “The fact that he encourages people towards suicide at Beachy Head says all you need to know about the man behind the words.

“His self-reverential, pompous and dystopian excuse for humour is a thinly veiled mid-life crisis that he would do well to save for the therapist’s couch.

“In the meantime we Brightonians will crack on enjoying the weather, the festival, the sport and the good life in total disregard of has-been hacks like him.”

Simon Kirby, MP for Brighton Kemptown, described the comments as “totally inappropriate” and defended the city as a vibrant and diverse.

Liddle made his feelings known after Brighton hosted one of the largest Sats demonstrations in the country last week.

Commenting on the hundreds who gathered in Preston Park, he sniped: “It is a mild surprise that there any people left in Brighton predisposed towards procreating in the normal manner.”

He added: “My suspicion is, though, that the parents took their kids out of the Sats tests because they were scared stiff that their brats would be revealed as being even thicker than they are.

“That’s usually the reason the middle class cavil at tests in schools.

“And they retrospectively decide that their children are one of two things — either ‘dyslexic’ or ‘more intuitive, intellectually, than academic’. Au contraire – your child got a Sats score that would embarrass a bowl of cauliflower cheese because he is as thick as a plank.”

Nupur Verma, one of the organisers of last week’s protest, said the comments would not deter them in their cause.

She said: “We find it regrettable that individuals think it’s acceptable to attack and insult children as young as six.

“The new curriculum and the new Sats being implemented in state primary schools are setting all of our children, all of our teachers and all of our schools up to fail.”

Council leader Warren Morgan said the weekend just gone, with the football, great weather and Festival, was evidence of what makes the city so great.

THIS IS WHAT A HALFWIT LOOKS LIKE (Rod Liddle pictured below)

Profile of Rod Liddle by Ben James

BORN in South London on April Fool’s Day 1960, Rod Liddle has made a living out of being a bit of a joke.

There’s no mistaking him with his trademark paunch, dishevelled appearance and scruffy hair that makes Boris Johnson look like he’s a regular at Toni and Guy.

He began his career in journalism at the South Wales Echo in Cardiff before working as a speechwriter for the Labour Party in the 1980s.

The cut-price Clarkson later joined the BBC and was made editor of the Today programme in 1998 before turning his hand to television. But he is best known these days for the columns he writes for The Spectator, The Sunday Times and The Sun.

Over the years he has managed to offend just about everyone, from women and Muslims to Jews and the gay community.

And now he has turned his attention to us Brightonians, describing us as halfwits. But from reading the below, you will see who the real halfwit is.

In August 2009, he started a piece on his Spectator blog about the then deputy leader of the Labour Party: “So – Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober.”

The 56-year-old has also been accused of racism on a number of occasions. In November 2009 he wrote a piece for the The Spectator in which he offered “a quick update on what the Muslim savages are up to”.

The following March he became the first journalist to be censured over the contents of a blog, after the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint against Liddle’s quip on multiculturism.

He wrote that the overwhelming majority of violent crime in London was carried out by young African-Caribbean men.

He was unable to back up his claim about crime statistics.

He also did little for the reputation of his beloved Millwall Football Club when he posted on a fan forum that black people have lower IQs than white people.  He also used the forum to bemoan that he wasn’t allowed to “sneak round the back of the gas chambers” for a “crafty snout” at Auschwitz.

In the run up to last year’s General Election he managed to offend not just the transgender community but also the blind in one woefully unfunny joke.

Writing about a blind and transgender Labour parliamentary candidate, he managed to insult her sex, her sexuality and her blindness.  He later apologised.

The gay community has also been on the receiving end of his bile, describing homosexual practices in an article as “unnatural and perverse”.

But Liddle is not just nasty in his professional life.

He married journalist Rachel Royce in 2004, only to cut short their honeymoon so he could be with Alicia Monckton, a 22-year-old receptionist at The Spectator.

He later married her and traded insults with his ex-wife in the papers. Royce found Viagra in his pockets at the time of the affair which he said was for research.

But his new romance wasn’t all sweetness and light after the police were called to their house following a domestic disturbance in 2005.

He accepted a caution for common assault but later denied it.  Monckton was pregnant at the time.

HE DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH, NO?

Opinion by Argus columnist Ericka Waller

A COUPLE of things spring to mind after reading Rod Liddle’s attack on Brighton and everything we stand for.  The first is the wise adage “the lady doth protest too much”.

He seems obsessed with his hair (the first third of his Spectator column is about his precious locks), which suggests he has a feminine side.  Maybe it’s screaming to come out. “I am having terrible trouble with my hair at the moment,” he laments, “It is lank, flat and lifeless. There are split ends. Also, it doesn’t smell too good.”

Based on this, I’d not be surprised to see Rod dressed in drag at Brighton Pride. He probably wrote his scathing blight on our city in a pair of frilly pants, padded bra and come hither boots.

Not that we’d care.  That is after all the beauty of this city.  You can come and be who you are, who you always secretly wanted to be and no one gives a hoot. We’ve quite simply got better things to do.

Perhaps it’s a case of the green-eyed monster. Maybe Rod wishes he could spend his days eating falafels, doing a naked bike ride and going on the pier wearing a kiss-me-quick hat.

According to Rod, if the people of Brighton “can’t be a**ed” to make the short journey to Beachy Head, he will personally chaperone us.

He adds: “They’re all in favour of assisted dying, after all. Well, let me lend a helping hand.”

If he is as provocative in person as he is behind the safety of a computer he’ll have no trouble attracting attention down here.  Brighton loves a diva after all.  He was outraged about us “cretinous leftie-green activist parents” organising our recent strike in protest of our “unspeakable children” having to do Sats.

After reading his columns I see I was wrong to do this. I should stamp and suck the life out my kids now, force them to conform and smother them in bigoted opinions so they can grow up to become cyber bullies too.  It’s a shame, really. He named his daughter Emmeline after the Suffragette, almost as if he cared about her rights.

He has since dedicated his life to being the worst kind of role model. He’s been in trouble for contempt of court, domestic violence as well as racist and homophobic comments.  This is a man who cut short his honeymoon to get back to his 22-year-old receptionist with whom he was having an affair. This is a man who complained he wasn’t able to smoke at Auschwitz.

Like Rod Hull’s highly aggressive arm-length puppet modelled on the Australian flightless emu bird, Liddle is a media whore who will say anything papers want for a pay packet.

And it is not the first time he has stuck the boot into Brighton.

In 2013 he wrote in his Sunday Times column that he would rather live in North Korea.  Well Rod, why don’t you do us all a favour? We will personally chaperone you.