Roderick E. Liddle (born 1 April 1960) is an English journalist, and an associate editor of The Spectator. He was an editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme. His published works include Too Beautiful for You (2003), Love Will Destroy Everything (2007), The Best of Liddle Britain (co-author, 2007) and the semi-autobiographical Selfish Whining Monkeys (2014). He has presented television programmes, including The New Fundamentalists, The Trouble with Atheism, and Immigration Is A Time Bomb. Liddle began his career at the South Wales Echo, then worked for the Labour Party, and later joined the BBC. He became editor of Today in 1998, resigning in 2002 after his employers objected to one of his articles in The Guardian. He currently writes for The Sunday Times, The Spectator and The Sun, among other publications. Early life and radio Liddle was born in Sidcup, Kent, the son of a train driver. From the age of eight, he was brought up in Nunthorpe, a suburb of Middlesbrough, in north east England. He was educated at the comprehensive Laurence Jackson School in nearby Guisborough and the adjacent Prior Pursglove College, where he formed a punk band called Dangerbird. At 16, he was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, remaining a member for about a year, and was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) around the same time. He attended the London School of Economics (LSE) as a mature student, where he read Social Psychology. His early career in journalism was with the South Wales Echo in Cardiff where he was a general news reporter and, for a time, the rock and pop writer. He worked between 1983 and 1987 as a speechwriter and researcher for the Labour Party. Although Liddle considered becoming a teacher, he decided against it on the grounds that he "could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids". Liddle also courted controversy discussing the public and police's response to child pornography and highlighted the Pete Townshend case as a means to highlight problems with enforcing the law. Liddle instead returned to journalism after graduating from the LSE, and was taken on as a trainee producer by the BBC. Liddle was appointed editor of the Today programme in 1998. The programme had a strong reputation for its political interviews, but Liddle tried, with some success, to improve the programme's investigative journalism. To this end he hired