In Kansas City his morning current affairs talkshow on KUDL, then an evening talk show on KFIX, both ended in sackings for what he described as differences with management at this point he considered himself a “moderate failure”. He was then fired from a night-time show in Pittsburgh when new management took over. He did poorly at school, then quit Southeast Missouri State University after a year and found a job with a radio station in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, as “Bachelor Jeff Christie”, but was fired after he told a black caller he claimed to find difficult to understand to “take the bone out of your nose and call again”. His mother, Mildred (nee Armstrong), was the family clown, and encouraged “Rusty” in his love of radio. Limbaugh (pronounced “LIM baw”) was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, into a family of conservative judges that included his father, whose name was also Rush. In recent years the independent fact-checking site PolitiFact consistently rated Limbaugh high in terms of “pants on fire” untruths, and just as consistently at zero on truths. His listeners, whom he dubbed “ditto-heads”, ate it up, while those who were offended often tuned in to express their disgust. When he cut off callers on air, he would play a vacuum cleaner noise, shouting “caller abortion”. “Have you ever noticed how composite sketches of criminals always look like Jesse Jackson?” he asked. He argued that the existence of gorillas disproved evolution, characterised both the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (2010) and the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand (2019) as “false flag” operations organised by leftists, and accused the Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe of allowing the Charlottesville rioting in 2017 to worsen in order to boost his presidential ambitions. Limbaugh set the tone for the internet age of politics, calling women’s rights activists “feminazis”, referring to HIV/Aids as “Rock Hudson’s disease” and claiming “environmentalist wackos” were “a bunch of scientists organised around a political position”. His broadcasts, featuring attacks on opponents as purveyors of “fake news”, became the template for TV’s Fox News, and at its peak this approach played a big part in Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” of 1994, which recaptured the House of Representatives from Bill Clinton’s Democrats.

Rush Limbaugh, who has died aged 70 after suffering from cancer, virtually created the style of political “shock jock” radio that made him so influential.

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