Rod Liddle on the Millwall supporters website

Rod Liddle has been outed by the Mail on Sunday as being the poster monkeymfc on a Millwall supporters' website, though Liddle claims to having been the victim of a hacker. Despite this, he is still posting on the site.

In a thread "Internationally notorious 1st 11" we find comments like these:

The problem is always dealing with a mercurial player like Pol Pot. I'd keep him on the bench, use him as an impact player to come on in the last fifteen minutes and kill two million people...

Richard Reid, the shoebomber who forgot to pack a lighter, could be the team's duff signing, unpopular with fans.

Of the "North Korean fella" (a confusion of Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il) he responds "yes, he's worth a place, bless him." The name of Brian Clough enters the discussion:

Ooooh, careful with Cloughie. May have been Old Labour but still suggested that there were too many "wogs" in the British game (I think he meant ni**ers) and that he'd join the NF if Africa was allowed two places in the world cup.

Africa now has five places in the world cup, btw.

In a later post, after an intervening reference to "Yids", he returns to his African theme, somewhat inconsistently: "Cloughie was ... pro great big grand schemes for the white working class, but racist. I agree with him about ASfrica [sic] and the world cup though..."

In other threads Liddle has made jokes about a visit to Auschwitz and given what appears to be explicit support for the BNP, after another poster complained that he had not seen the English Defence League beat up Asians:

If you read the last Labour manifesto it will tell you that they are the voice of britain - they want better for you, for your family, for everyone. Utter rollocks. So apply the same criteria to the EDL. The EDL want a ruck, simples. If that's all you want, fair enough. I prefer the BNP to the EDL - they DO support the white working class, even if they are thick as chit, misguided and dislike Islam only because it is practised by wogs (check out their policies - could be Hizbut Tahrir).

Liddle is a journalist who has been noticeably soft on the BNP in the past, so these comments contain nothing which will surprise anyone who "can read between the lines".

Oh no, it's Rod Liddle Independent editor!

If, as expected, Alexander Lebedev takes over The Independent it is forecast Rod Liddle will be the next editor. Taking this hint, I wondered what Yasmin Alibhai Brown has been saying about him.

A "Bad Boy Made Rich", Albhai Brown in 2004 discussed his messy private life, and described the man himself as "physically not unlike a malodorous mop in need of chucking out". Last October, she referred to him as being

a braggadocio now considered frightfully brilliant because he vilifies women, black people, Muslims, the BBC and many others with his anti-PC, cutting observations.

Responding to his unpleasant comments about Harriet Harman, discussed here a few months ago, she asked:

Well would you, male or female readers, would you take Liddle to your bed? He looks as unappetising as a half-eaten fish pie left on a plate, was caught with Viagra in his pocket by his now ex-wife, a woman he then humiliated and left for some young thing at the Spectator. Answers directly to Mr Liddle please. Three cheers for Janet Street Porter, Suzanne Moore and others who have slapped him down.

Street Porter referred to Liddle as "that repulsive shagger" who is "all bluster and no balls" and Moore called him "Liddlerod". Tanya Gold is most to the point:

And so I ask – Rod Liddle, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober.

And I don't mean would you fuck him. I mean – would you believe him?

Thanks: Viv Groskop in the Evening Standard