Bronze-level article

Richard Littlejohn

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Parroting squawkbox
Pundits
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And a dirty dozen more
Melanie Phillips, but with boobs.
—Ben Summerskill, reviewing Littlejohn's Britain[1]

Richard Littlejohn (born 18 January 1954) is a British tabloid columnist, commentator and author best known for his reactionary stances and obsession with homosexuality. He is currently a twice-weekly columnist for the infamous Daily Mail. He was previously a columnist for The Sun and has also written for The Spectator and London's Evening Standard. One of his biggest accolades is the title of "the stupid person's Jeremy Clarkson" in a Guardian review of Littlejohn's Britain.[2]

Quotes and views[edit]

For some evidence of his quite twisted view of the world, look no further than his comments on the serial killing of five women who worked as prostitutes in 2005:

It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in their chosen field of "work," death by strangulation is an occupational hazard.[3]

While working for radio station LBCWikipedia in the early 1990s, he was once censured for suggesting that the police should have "turned flamethrowers on" a group of "militant homosexuals" protesting outside the Houses of Parliament.[4]

More recently he opined that the late Labour Party leader Michael Foot was a hypocrite, because he failed to fight in the Second World War - this attack being written in the full knowledge that Foot had weak lungs,[5] causing him to be ruled ineligible for military service despite volunteering.[6]

He has been repeatedly accused of being a racist and a homophobe, something that journalist Johann Hari has described as "a demonstrable, provable fact".[7] Hari has been one of Littlejohn's more outspoken critics, challenging Littlejohn on several of his "facts" regarding immigration and asylum seekers, something that Littlejohn has shown himself to be unable to effectively respond to.[8]

Following his obsessive homophobia, Littlejohn may quite possibly be a repressed homosexual. To quote Marina Hyde's charting of his obsession in 2004:

"In the past year's Sun columns, Richard has referred 42 times to gays, 16 times to lesbians, 15 to homosexuals, eight to bisexuals, twice to 'homophobia' and six to being 'homophobic' (note his scornful inverted commas), five times to cottaging, four to 'gay sex in public toilets', three to poofs, twice to lesbianism, and once each to buggery, dykery, and poovery. This amounts to 104 references in 90-odd columns — an impressive increase on his 2003 total of 82 mentions. There is, alas, no space for us to revisit the scientific study which found obsessive homophobes more responsive to gay porn. But Richard, we're begging you: talk to someone." [9]

Littlejohn moans about aspects of Britain that are in decline due to immigrants and lefties, writing as though he is reporting from the streets of London, but he gets away with it because his loyal readers are unaware that he lives quite comfortably in an upmarket community in Vero Beach, Florida and thus is not exactly an on-the-spot source.

Possibly his most painful output is when he "imagines" an event that didn't happen, using his encyclopaedic knowledge of The Sweeney and Only Fools and Horses to create a clunking, lumbering script where individuals he dislikes (left wing politicians, "luvvies", activists etc) play the part of a weak, dishonest, scheming or laughing stock character. This allows Littlejohn to create an entirely false reality that supports his worldview.

Books and novels[edit]

Richard Littlejohn's quickly-remaindered novel To Hell in a Handbasket was once described by David Aaronovitch as "a 400-page recruiting pamphlet for the BNP".[10] His latest book, Littlejohn's House of Fun: Thirteen Years of (Labour) Madness, picked up some hilarious spoof reviews on Amazon.co.uk.[11]

External links[edit]

References[edit]