Rise, Rod, Rise

With lots of hardcore swearing, Rod Liddle "talks about his return to London as a young man (he was born in Bermondsey, hence his allegiance to Millwall) to study at LSE and how shocked he was to encounter students who were so posh and so privileged and just so bloody ... liberal.

"Before that he had considered himself middle-class (his father ended up as a tax inspector, his mother worked at the then DHSS). But not any more. "The gap between my family and the poorest family in Middlesbrough was tiny, and the gap between my family and the London lot was just enormous. And that difference has got bigger and bigger and bigger."

I had that experience, pretty much. I always thought that I was middle-class until I went to university. You are what you are treated as being, and I was left in even less doubt there than I had been, in the other direction, at school.

Up to and including the fact that within four years of leaving school, I was a governor both of my old primary and of my old secondary, each of which still had the same Head as when I had been a pupil there. But they did not see me like that at university.

Still, the late Marguerite Annie Johnson never attended any university. "Maya" was a childhood nickname, while "Angelou" was nothing more than a contraction of her first husband's surname.

Yet she was known to the world as "Dr Maya Angelou". She created the position of Dr Maya Angelou in world literature, culture and politics. By her death, she has left that position vacant.

I therefore propose that Rod Liddle assume forthwith the rank, style, title and office of Dr Maya Angelou, with all sartorial requirements accordingly.

Does his sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise that he dances like he's got diamonds at the meeting of his thighs? It neither upsets nor surprises me in the least.

The only upset or surprise would be if those things were somehow not the case. But they are. They very, very, very much are.

Rise, Rod.

Rise.