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After years as a serial philanderer, Rod Liddle, the newspaper columnist and former editor of Radio 4's Today programme, says he has discovered the joys of monogamy and marriage late in life with his second wife (and former mistress) Alicia.
Here, Rachel Royce, his furious first wife - whom he left four months after their wedding day - blasts back.
Dear Rod, there are days when I think you can cause me no more pain. After all, it’s seven years since you left me. Both of our lives have moved on.
But when I read reports yesterday of a radio interview in which you proclaim you have discovered the whole point of marriage, I’m ashamed to say it made me cry. Not just with sorrow, but with rage.
You said: ‘I have come to the point of view... that one of the things that is rather wonderful about monogamous marriage is the self- discipline imposed.’
Pity you didn’t hold that view when, just four months after our wedding, you walked out on me and our two children for your 22-year-old receptionist, Alicia — the woman who is now your second wife and with whom you have a daughter.
Now let me be clear: I believe people should be entitled to learn from their mistakes. But to make this public proclamation, as if you are some sort of authority on the ethics and principles of marriage, would be comical were it not so sickening.
Even then, I could have coped with what many would call hypocrisy. But my fury finally boiled over when you said of our relationship: ‘I wasn’t particularly happy . . . and I met someone else. The failure was to have got married in the first place.’
How could you say such a thing? It’s as if you are trying to relinquish any responsibility for the years of misery you’ve caused me and our two children in the wake of our divorce.
Not only is your denigration of the love we shared humiliating for me, it would be so upsetting for the boys if they ever were to learn this is how you felt about their mother. Why do you feel the need to rewrite history in this spiteful way?
Since it seems to have slipped your mind, perhaps I should remind you that though we were married for only four months, we were together for 11 years and shared incredibly happy times together.
I still remember vividly the holiday in which we conceived our first child after five years as a couple. We had gone to Portugal to spend a few days together after the non-stop whirlwind of work. Back then, we were both covering the Labour landslide victory of 1997 — me as a TV journalist and you as a producer for Radio 4’s Today programme.
We went for a lovely walk and for the first time in my life I saw fireflies dancing. That night you asked me if I wanted a baby and I said: ‘Yes.’
Were you already being unfaithful to me when our relationship seemed so happy, so romantic, so filled with hope for the future? I will never know.
But as far as I am concerned, the ‘failure’ in our relationship was that your continual infidelities meant it never truly stood a chance. For what I do know is that Alicia certainly wasn’t the first time you strayed, as you have admitted yourself.
During a spat a couple of years ago, you let on that you’d had a long affair with a girl called Miranda very early on in our relationship. I hadn’t known about that.
Then there was Emma. After the birth of our second child, our relationship had plummeted into serious difficulty. Within weeks of moving to the countryside to give our family a better life, you started to spend night after night in London, leaving me alone with two babies.
That’s when you started telling me about this pretty girl, a junior on Today, whom you had taken out for dinner. When I challenged you about her, you would claim that while obviously you fancied other pretty women, you wouldn’t actually do anything about it.
Can you for one moment try to make that great big brain of yours comprehend how that made me feel? I had moved 100 miles from my family and friends in London, with two children to look after, and you flippantly described taking this other woman out for dinner.
I felt vulnerable enough about my body — having given birth to your two children within 18 months — without you openly lusting after someone else.
I’m not sure why you did it, except that, like other men with great jobs, you could, couldn’t you? You had been promoted to editor of the Today Programme, a powerful job that made you more attractive to a certain kind of grasping woman.
You had always been attractive to me — from the moment we met on a night shift at the BBC in the early Nineties, with your punkish looks, intensely romantic nature and brilliant mind.
But as your career took off, you lost any notion of restraint. You left me and the children behind.
I remember crying when you came home in a new Dolce & Gabbana shirt Emma had bought you for Christmas. When I challenged you about it, you said I should be grateful she bought you clothes because it saved us money. And no, you still wouldn’t admit you were sleeping with her! Like a fool, I believed you.
It was only 18 months later that I found a text on your phone that read: ‘I hope you can sort your life out. I love you and want us to be together.’ I rang the number. It was Emma.
She told me you’d been living in London with her during the week and she had no idea we were still together.
When I asked her where she thought you were at the weekends, she told me you had said you were going home to see the children, but not me.
Rod, have you no comprehension or care for the hurt your double life caused both of us, even now that you realise the ‘point’ of monogamy?
Emma had the decency to drop you like a hot brick. I threw you out of the house. But a week later, I allowed you back on the basis of the most amazing love letter you wrote to me — and because I loved you and wanted our relationship to work.
On our next holiday to Malaysia shortly after, you went down on one knee and proposed to me during a thunderstorm.
I said ‘Yes’ and a year later we had a lavish wedding I hoped would mark the start of a marriage that would last . . . well, till death us do part. But just four months later came revelations of another betrayal.
I’d long worried about your relationship with Alicia, but it was only when I discovered Viagra in your jacket pocket that I felt bold enough to confront you both.
You claimed it was for experimental purposes, but she admitted you’d been having an affair for months. He’d even flown back early from our honeymoon to be with her.
Where was the ‘self-discipline’ instilled by marriage then? Where was the trust and commitment you now apparently see the wisdom of?
But if your comments this week, delivered to a national audience on Radio 5 Live, were hurtful about our marriage, they were doubly so when you describe becoming a parent.
You said: ‘Couples marry and have children too quickly.’ Do you mean we shouldn’t have had our two darling children? That we were too young? Need I remind you I was 36 when I had our first child — how could that be construed as too early? I’d have been lucky to have children at all if we’d left it any longer.
I know many couples get divorced and, sadly, it’s a part of life. Normally, though, there is some sense of contrition on the part of the unfaithful spouse. But I feel you’ve ignored the misery and trauma you caused me and our children.
I know I am ashamed of the distress I caused our sons in the wake of our divorce. Traumatised by your betrayal, I flung myself into a couple of unsuitable relationships in quick succession.
Meanwhile, you were taking your young mistress on expensive holidays, spending £30,000 to impress her and not seeing our sons for weeks on end.
The boys went through a terrible time with a mother who would burst into tears and shout at them sometimes with stress.
I remember one occasion coming home after a particularly long shift at ITV and our youngest son saying: ‘Why can’t you be at home like other mummies?’
I shouted at him: ‘Why don’t you ask your father? Alicia doesn’t have to work.’
Shortly after I went to the doctor and was prescribed Prozac. But nothing could take away the pain of trying to juggle full-time work with caring for our children — all the while aware that a much younger woman was reaping the benefits of your ascent up the career ladder.
Our youngest went through a stage of going around the house looking for any coins he could find, bringing them to me and saying: ‘Now can you stay at home with me?’
Yes, you have always paid maintenance and you see the boys every other weekend. But I’m the one who has to attend sports days and parents’ evenings alone.
And now these hurtful comments.
Of course, in one sense I can understand why you have changed your mind about monogamy: older men often wise up when they fear they are losing their looks and they have a half-attractive, younger wife on their arm.
But denying the validity of an 11-year relationship that produced two children is just plain cruel.
I still believe that if you had been monogamous for even a year we might have stood a chance of making it and our boys wouldn’t be the victims of a broken home with all the disruption and emotional and educational disadvantage that brings.
You couldn’t keep it in your trousers when we were together, but now you can. Well, congratulations!
For the sake of your daughter, our boys’ half-sister, I hope you truly are the leopard that has changed its spots.
Or is it just that the Viagra has stopped working?
source
Here, Rachel Royce, his furious first wife - whom he left four months after their wedding day - blasts back.
Dear Rod, there are days when I think you can cause me no more pain. After all, it’s seven years since you left me. Both of our lives have moved on.
But when I read reports yesterday of a radio interview in which you proclaim you have discovered the whole point of marriage, I’m ashamed to say it made me cry. Not just with sorrow, but with rage.
You said: ‘I have come to the point of view... that one of the things that is rather wonderful about monogamous marriage is the self- discipline imposed.’
Pity you didn’t hold that view when, just four months after our wedding, you walked out on me and our two children for your 22-year-old receptionist, Alicia — the woman who is now your second wife and with whom you have a daughter.
Now let me be clear: I believe people should be entitled to learn from their mistakes. But to make this public proclamation, as if you are some sort of authority on the ethics and principles of marriage, would be comical were it not so sickening.
Even then, I could have coped with what many would call hypocrisy. But my fury finally boiled over when you said of our relationship: ‘I wasn’t particularly happy . . . and I met someone else. The failure was to have got married in the first place.’
How could you say such a thing? It’s as if you are trying to relinquish any responsibility for the years of misery you’ve caused me and our two children in the wake of our divorce.
Not only is your denigration of the love we shared humiliating for me, it would be so upsetting for the boys if they ever were to learn this is how you felt about their mother. Why do you feel the need to rewrite history in this spiteful way?
Since it seems to have slipped your mind, perhaps I should remind you that though we were married for only four months, we were together for 11 years and shared incredibly happy times together.
I still remember vividly the holiday in which we conceived our first child after five years as a couple. We had gone to Portugal to spend a few days together after the non-stop whirlwind of work. Back then, we were both covering the Labour landslide victory of 1997 — me as a TV journalist and you as a producer for Radio 4’s Today programme.
We went for a lovely walk and for the first time in my life I saw fireflies dancing. That night you asked me if I wanted a baby and I said: ‘Yes.’
Were you already being unfaithful to me when our relationship seemed so happy, so romantic, so filled with hope for the future? I will never know.
But as far as I am concerned, the ‘failure’ in our relationship was that your continual infidelities meant it never truly stood a chance. For what I do know is that Alicia certainly wasn’t the first time you strayed, as you have admitted yourself.
During a spat a couple of years ago, you let on that you’d had a long affair with a girl called Miranda very early on in our relationship. I hadn’t known about that.
Then there was Emma. After the birth of our second child, our relationship had plummeted into serious difficulty. Within weeks of moving to the countryside to give our family a better life, you started to spend night after night in London, leaving me alone with two babies.
That’s when you started telling me about this pretty girl, a junior on Today, whom you had taken out for dinner. When I challenged you about her, you would claim that while obviously you fancied other pretty women, you wouldn’t actually do anything about it.
Can you for one moment try to make that great big brain of yours comprehend how that made me feel? I had moved 100 miles from my family and friends in London, with two children to look after, and you flippantly described taking this other woman out for dinner.
I felt vulnerable enough about my body — having given birth to your two children within 18 months — without you openly lusting after someone else.
I’m not sure why you did it, except that, like other men with great jobs, you could, couldn’t you? You had been promoted to editor of the Today Programme, a powerful job that made you more attractive to a certain kind of grasping woman.
You had always been attractive to me — from the moment we met on a night shift at the BBC in the early Nineties, with your punkish looks, intensely romantic nature and brilliant mind.
But as your career took off, you lost any notion of restraint. You left me and the children behind.
I remember crying when you came home in a new Dolce & Gabbana shirt Emma had bought you for Christmas. When I challenged you about it, you said I should be grateful she bought you clothes because it saved us money. And no, you still wouldn’t admit you were sleeping with her! Like a fool, I believed you.
It was only 18 months later that I found a text on your phone that read: ‘I hope you can sort your life out. I love you and want us to be together.’ I rang the number. It was Emma.
She told me you’d been living in London with her during the week and she had no idea we were still together.
When I asked her where she thought you were at the weekends, she told me you had said you were going home to see the children, but not me.
Rod, have you no comprehension or care for the hurt your double life caused both of us, even now that you realise the ‘point’ of monogamy?
Emma had the decency to drop you like a hot brick. I threw you out of the house. But a week later, I allowed you back on the basis of the most amazing love letter you wrote to me — and because I loved you and wanted our relationship to work.
On our next holiday to Malaysia shortly after, you went down on one knee and proposed to me during a thunderstorm.
I said ‘Yes’ and a year later we had a lavish wedding I hoped would mark the start of a marriage that would last . . . well, till death us do part. But just four months later came revelations of another betrayal.
I’d long worried about your relationship with Alicia, but it was only when I discovered Viagra in your jacket pocket that I felt bold enough to confront you both.
You claimed it was for experimental purposes, but she admitted you’d been having an affair for months. He’d even flown back early from our honeymoon to be with her.
Where was the ‘self-discipline’ instilled by marriage then? Where was the trust and commitment you now apparently see the wisdom of?
But if your comments this week, delivered to a national audience on Radio 5 Live, were hurtful about our marriage, they were doubly so when you describe becoming a parent.
You said: ‘Couples marry and have children too quickly.’ Do you mean we shouldn’t have had our two darling children? That we were too young? Need I remind you I was 36 when I had our first child — how could that be construed as too early? I’d have been lucky to have children at all if we’d left it any longer.
I know many couples get divorced and, sadly, it’s a part of life. Normally, though, there is some sense of contrition on the part of the unfaithful spouse. But I feel you’ve ignored the misery and trauma you caused me and our children.
I know I am ashamed of the distress I caused our sons in the wake of our divorce. Traumatised by your betrayal, I flung myself into a couple of unsuitable relationships in quick succession.
Meanwhile, you were taking your young mistress on expensive holidays, spending £30,000 to impress her and not seeing our sons for weeks on end.
The boys went through a terrible time with a mother who would burst into tears and shout at them sometimes with stress.
I remember one occasion coming home after a particularly long shift at ITV and our youngest son saying: ‘Why can’t you be at home like other mummies?’
I shouted at him: ‘Why don’t you ask your father? Alicia doesn’t have to work.’
Shortly after I went to the doctor and was prescribed Prozac. But nothing could take away the pain of trying to juggle full-time work with caring for our children — all the while aware that a much younger woman was reaping the benefits of your ascent up the career ladder.
Our youngest went through a stage of going around the house looking for any coins he could find, bringing them to me and saying: ‘Now can you stay at home with me?’
Yes, you have always paid maintenance and you see the boys every other weekend. But I’m the one who has to attend sports days and parents’ evenings alone.
And now these hurtful comments.
Of course, in one sense I can understand why you have changed your mind about monogamy: older men often wise up when they fear they are losing their looks and they have a half-attractive, younger wife on their arm.
But denying the validity of an 11-year relationship that produced two children is just plain cruel.
I still believe that if you had been monogamous for even a year we might have stood a chance of making it and our boys wouldn’t be the victims of a broken home with all the disruption and emotional and educational disadvantage that brings.
You couldn’t keep it in your trousers when we were together, but now you can. Well, congratulations!
For the sake of your daughter, our boys’ half-sister, I hope you truly are the leopard that has changed its spots.
Or is it just that the Viagra has stopped working?
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