If one programme has to be picked as the flagship of the BBC - as a mark of gravitas, standards and influence - it would not come from the television studio.

It would be the Today programme, BBC Radio 4's breakfast fill of heavyweight news and bruising political encounters that sets the agenda for broadcasters and is required listening for seven million people.

I should like to be in trouble more with my bosses

Rod Liddle

It seemed curious, then, that the man charged with steering this vehicle through its very own political minefield appeared to be the antithesis of the BBC establishment.

Magic touch

Scruffy, mischievous and unashamedly awkward, Rod Liddle, 42, is a far cry from the stuffy image conjured by his programme's serious tone.

Legend has it that he has never worn a tie to work in his life - despite ascending the ladder of BBC news.

He previously edited The World Tonight and worked as a producer on the World at One and Weekend World.

And he has managed to avoid major confrontations during his four-year reign at Today despite once telling an interviewer: "I should like to be in trouble more with my bosses."

Or maybe it was his bosses who avoided confrontation with him - he added one million listeners to the show's audience over two years and was popular with his journalists.

No matter about his maverick style, that magic touch is hard to find.

Speechwriter

But the men in suits could not avoid deciding that he had gone one step too far when he took aim at Countryside Alliance protesters in his weekly newspaper column.

The BBC is supposed to be the bastion of impartiality - and the editor of Today, of all things, could not be seen to have such strong and controversial views.

A cussed, free-born Englishman who will not be brow-beaten by timid, politically correct conformists

On Rod Liddle

Liddle himself has resisted accusations of bias, describing himself as to the left on the economy and ecology and to the right on foreign issues.

Born in south London, he is a product of a comprehensive school in Guisborough, Cleveland, and the London School of Economics.

He joined the BBC after being a speechwriter for the Labour Party between 1983 and 1987 - what he playfully describes as "their most spectacularly unsuccessful period in history".

'Cussed'

But he is said to have preferred the party in its unreconstructed socialist days to its New Labour era, and has not avoided causing headaches for Downing Street.

One of his most controversial decisions was to allow a spokesman for the British National Party on the show during the race riots in Bradford and Oldham in the summer of 2001.

He has also been lambasted for being "endemically biased in favour of the euro" and had a public argument with Labour chairman Charles Clarke over dumbing down.

"A cussed, free-born Englishman who will not be brow-beaten by timid, politically correct conformists" is how one sympathetic commentator recently described him.

But now he has left Today, he will at least have the chance to rectify one of the failings to which he admits on the programme's website.

"He has no hobbies, interests, hinterland or, indeed, personality," it states in an apparent sideways swipe at the BBC's rules that forced him to put a lid on his personal views.