NOTE: Anticato (Anticatones) was a two-book satirical work written by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE, created as a riposte to the glowing eulogies of Cicero, and praising Cato the Younger, who died rather messily by his own hand the previous year, rather than be pardoned by Caesar. No complete sentences or direct extended quotes survive from Caesar’s polemic.

Of course, Rod Liddle is no Cato, and I’m certainly not Julius Caesar, but the gratuitous a**e-licking accorded the journalist since his death on August 2 2026 surely deserves some kind of rebuttal. Maybe something even Liddle would agree with, in his less egotistical moments.

Some of the recent press eulogies to Roderick Edwin Liddle include many from his colleagues at The Spectator, and other right-wing periodicals:

“The best satirist since Jonathan Swift” — Fraser Nelson

Rod Liddle was a brilliant friend - Tim Luckhurst, The Spectator

Rod Liddle, one of the most fearless journalists of his generation — Grant Rollings, The Sun

How Rod Liddle shook up the BBC — Roger Mosey, The Spectator

I didn’t want to like Rod Liddle — Kemi Badenoch, The Spectator

Rod Liddle’s death is a terrible blow to public life — Brendan O’Neill, Spiked

Rod Liddle was one of the finest journalists of his generation — Tim Shipman, The Spectator

Rod Liddle was the most exciting boss I ever had — Andrew Gilligan, The Spectator

Why I could never tone down Rod Liddle — Fraser Nelson, The Spectator

I could never dislike Rod — even when he threatened to punch me – Toby Young

“A**e-lickers and brown-nosers,” as Liddle himself, in another context, once termed those who actively sought political honours. I’m not so sure that Rod would have actually turned down the offer of a knighthood though.  

Case in point, just look at the awful Brexiteer/former Revolutionary Communist Party luminary Baroness Fox, who, in a 2015 social media post, praised politicians declining to take up peerages, and frequently argued for the abolition of the House of Lords.

Roderick, as a youth, was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, well before the more financially attractive later career path of right-wing bullshittery opened up to him.

Firstly, I must say that I never knew Liddle personally; everything I have gleaned about the fellow is purely based on his columns, public utterances and appearances on radio and television.

For all I know, in private, Liddle could have been the avuncular Pickwickian figure described by some of his intimates, friends and toadies. But I somehow doubt it.

His performative rudeness, slovenly demeanour, tiresomely provocative piece about being tempted by schoolgirls if he were ever a teacher, and reported cruel treatment of his first and second wives, all made me regard Liddle as someone I would actively avoid, along with the likes of his Spectator boss Michael Gove, GB News presenters, Jeremy Kyle, and others of similar vomit-inducing ilk, to lean into Rod-speak.

To me at least, Liddle had a touch of Trump about him — the ridiculous dyed barnet of his middle years, the barely concealed vanity, the “kick-down” approach to other cultures, classes and peoples, the childish facial expressions, and last but not least, his appalling coterie of fawning admirers.

The kind of crowd that tends to follow bullies, revelling in his jabs at others, yet oh-so-glad they aren’t the target of his sourly contrived rhetorical sallies.

They will no doubt find some other figure to latch onto, although characters such as Brendan O’Neill, Kevin O’Sullivan, Toby Young and co, are hardly even in Liddle’s bottom-scraping class, which says more about them than him.