Irving: "If they're so touchy about the whole thing, they shouldn't have done it in the first place"

There's been an almost deathly silence in the print editions of the papers to which my news-addicted household subscribes about the return of David Irving to British soil. After the flurry of Reuters reports and then another flurry when a press conference saw him use the phrase 'nigger brown', it seems that Irving may well have finally exhausted the patience of the British Fourth Estate.

The solitary lone exception to the press blackout this Sunday seems to be a short diary column piece by Rod Liddle for The Sunday Times, entitled 'They've made a martyr out of this Holocaust denier'.

Liddle, for those of you who don't know the world of the British media intimately, is a moderately unpleasant former producer of Radio 4's Today breakfast news show and probably more famous for his marital infidelity than his sneering right-wing views. But even Liddle can't bring himself to do more than conclude his article with the line 'What a singularly unpleasant man Irving is, in almost every regard, despite his obvious erudition. A snob and a pathological racist who will now revel in his role as martyr to the freedom of speech'.

But this isn't the most notable thing about the article. Liddle evidently gave Irving a tinkle on the dog and bone, extracting the following quote from him:

"It did occur to me how many of the leading Nazis were either Austrian by birth,
or educated in Austria. Really, if they're so touchy about the whole thing, they
shouldn't have done it in the first place."

That should have a few deniers choking into their cornflakes this breakfast-time.