Since becoming Spectator editor there was one observation I heard more often from readers than any other: ‘Rod is the first page I turn to every week.’ Whatever people’s politics, background or other interests, to be a Spectator reader was to love Rod. As my predecessor, Fraser Nelson, has observed, Rod ranks with Swift as a satirist. I first got to know Rod when I was a tyro reporter at the BBC and he was an executive on the Today programme. And then he also found in The Spectator a home for his freest, most authentic, most daring writing.