Sacked shock-jock Jon Gaunt is taking legal action against talkSPORT over his firing for calling a councillor "a Nazi" after peace talks with the station failed.
Gaunt, who is also a Sun columnist, says on his website last night: "I have tried to offer an olive branch to Scott Taunton (talkSPORT managing director) but he has declined my overtures. He claims he will not reinstate me despite the tens of thousands of e-mails that you have sent in and that he and his press boy, Farmer, have struggled to reply to.
"Therefore he has left me with no choice but to take legal action and that has now started." Gaunt also claims that according to Ofcom's own website there were only 16 complaints about the broadcast that led to his sacking.
Surprisingly, given Gaunt's staunchly right-wing views he has been given the backing of civil rights campaign group Liberty and its director Shami Chakrabarti, who he once dubbed the “most dangerous woman in Britain" in a Sun column.
Liberty says Gaunt's firing is a freedom of speech issue and called for his reinstatement. In a letter to talkSPORT management, Chakrabarti wrote: "I urge you to reinstate Mr Gaunt’s programme without delay and have offered him support in the unlikely and unfortunate event that recourse to the Human Rights Act proves necessary.”
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