Times Radio moves a Liddle further to the right

For some time the Times newspaper has been moving gradually further right under the editorship of Tony Gallagher, a former Sun and Telegraph boss. Now it looks like its radio stablemate is moving in the same direction, with the announcement that rent-a-gob Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle is to helm its Saturday morning programme from this weekend.

The Saturday 10am slot has been left vacant since Hugo Rifkind, one of the station’s more thoughtful contributors, moved to weekdays after cheeky chappie Matt Chorley was poached by BBC Radio 5 Live. The most recent supply teacher was right-leaning stand-up comic Geoff Norcott. But now station chiefs have now settled on Liddle to take the slot on a permanent basis – and with such timing!

Liddle’s most recent column for the Spectator, his other main employer, was titled “What has the BBC got against Tommy Robinson?”, in which he pondered precisely what it could be about the much-convicted, violent football hooligan that was stopping the national broadcaster fawning over him.

Liddle then went on to defend the erstwhile Stephen Yaxley-Lennon on Talk, News UK’s digital video channel that was formerly TalkTV. “That man has not received what I would call proper justice from the British judiciary,” he said, agreeing when presenter Kevin O’Sullivan described ‘Robinson’ as a “political prisoner”.

Liddle added: “How he’s been treated by the state is what we might expect in Russia, frankly. And just to go back to the BBC, why do they always say Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson? They never say, when they’re introducing a transgender athlete, and this is Laurence Smith, also known as Loretta Jeannie Smith.”

If that’s what Times Radio listeners can expect, it is somewhat different to what was originally promised when the station launched. News UK boasted then that it would “target those disenfranchised by BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live” and would feature “great names of broadcasting”. It also promised “no adverts but brand sponsorship [would be] made available for individual shows”.

As it stands, the station now carries advertising like any other commercial station and, of the few serious broadcasters it did attract, only John Pienaar remains. Chorley departed after the election, Mariella Frostrup mysteriously disappeared without a valedictory appearance, breakfast show host Aasmah Mir goes at the end of this month and even the Times’ own Giles Coren got bored after just four months. Meanwhile, freelance voices fed up with unpaid invoices meant the station rapidly became Times journalists interviewing other Times journalists.

Now, with Liddle on board, it may as well merge with News UK’s other right-wing current affairs station, TalkRadio. Maybe Stephen Yaxley… sorry, Tommy Robinson, could fill a slot so cruelly denied him by the BBC once he’s out of the clink?