Richard Littlejohn

Richard Littlejohn (born 18 January 1954) is an English author, broadcaster and opinion column writer, having started his career as a journalist.

As of May 2023, he writes a twice-weekly column for the Daily Mail about British affairs.

Littlejohn has been a columnist for The Sun and has written for The Spectator and the London Evening Standard.

Littlejohn earned a place in the inaugural Press Gazette Newspaper Hall of Fame as one of the most influential journalists of the past 40 years.

Littlejohn was born in Ilford, Essex in 1954.

His family moved to Peterborough when he was five.

His father worked as a policeman and later as a manager for British Rail.

Littlejohn attended West Town Primary School where he passed the eleven-plus, obtaining the highest marks in his year.

He was offered a public school scholarship which he turned down because the school did not play football, and subsequently attended Deacon's School in Dogsthorpe, Peterborough.

At Deacon's School he appeared, when 13, as part of a team of four boys in Top of the Form against Kings Norton Grammar School for Girls, broadcast on Sunday 22 October 1967 on the new BBC Radio 2, which was recorded on Tuesday 19 September 1967.

In his team were Michael Conning, Martin Bradshaw of Walton, and the captain Martin Chambers.

It was recorded in the school hall with John Ellison; Tim Gudgin was at Kings Norton.

At 16, Littlejohn found employment as a trainee journalist in Peterborough.

He worked for local newspapers during the early 1970s.

In the mid-1970s, he joined the Birmingham Evening Mail as an industrial correspondent.

He worked at the London newspaper the Evening Standard from 1979 to 1989, initially as industrial editor, later a feature writer, then in 1988 as a columnist.

While industrial editor in the early 1980s he was asked to stand as a Labour Party candidate, which he declined.

In 1989, he joined The Sun as a columnist, which attracted controversy, and he was voted "Irritant of the Year" at the 1992 What The Papers Say Awards.

In March 1993 he gave his support to the "Save the New Statesman fund" to raise cash to contest libel suits served on the magazine by the then Prime Minister John Major and caterer Claire Latimer.

In 1994, he left The Sun to write for the Daily Mail, contributing columns on news and current affairs (in a similar format to his Sun column), and one on sport.

This was an urban myth first propagated in 1995 by the former Conservative Party chairman Brian Mawhinney, who took the name of the Hopscotch Asian Women's Centre literally.

The centre offers "support services for Asian women and their families on a wide range of issues including domestic violence, benefits, housing, education, immigration and health matters [and provided] advocacy and support to people with learning disabilities".

He was awarded the title of "Columnist of the Year" at the 1997 British Press Awards.

Littlejohn has been criticised for insufficient fact checking and for alleged homophobia.

Primarily a newspaper journalist, he has also presented numerous radio and television shows and has authored or co-authored several books.

His Mail columns earned him the title "Columnist of the Year" at the 1997 British Press Awards.

In February 1998, Littlejohn became the UK's best-paid columnist when he returned to The Sun to write a twice-weekly column as part of a £1million deal, which also included presenting for BSkyB.

In addition to regular columns, Littlejohn has contributed articles to The Spectator and Punch.

One of Littlejohn's Sun columns – a 2004 skit, entitled "Rum, Sodomy and the Lifejacket", in which Lord Nelson is confronted with political correctness, compensation culture and the nanny state – has been published in newspapers, magazines, and websites with Littlejohn's writing credit removed.

In 2004, the Diary column of The Guardian newspaper documented the results of a "Littlejohn audit" —a count of the number of references Littlejohn makes to homosexuality in his columns.

Marina Hyde of The Guardian wrote 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 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."

In May 2005, the Mail announced that he was rejoining the paper in a move that Mail editor Paul Dacre described as "returning to his spiritual home".

The Sun sought an injunction to prevent Littlejohn writing for the Mail before his existing contract with them ended in February 2006, but the matter was later settled out of court and Littlejohn began writing for the Mail in December 2005.

In December 2010, Littlejohn satirised an incident in which a 20-year-old man with cerebral palsy, Jody McIntyre, complained of mistreatment by police at a protest.

Littlejohn argued that the young man involved should not have attended the protest, and compared him to Andy Pipkin from Little Britain.

This prompted 500 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission.

In February 2011, Littlejohn wrote in his Daily Mail column that Haringey Council was using taxpayer funds for hopscotch lessons for Asian women.

In December 2012, the Daily Mail published an apology following a piece written by Littlejohn which suggested that ethnic minority staff had got their jobs through discrimination and had threatened to sue the Equality and Human Rights Commissions.

The Daily Mail agreed with the Press Complaints Council to publish an apology and clarification.

In December 2012, Littlejohn wrote an article criticising the decision of Accrington teacher Lucy Meadows to return to the same school after undergoing Gender Reassignment Surgery.