Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie has been dropped as a weekly columnist for Telegraph.co.uk after just one offering for the website.
The column was promoted on the front of page of the website last Thursday under the heading "meet our new columnist". And it was described as a new weekly column.
But the following day Telegraph football writer Henry Winter tweeted: "Re: the Kelvin MacKenzie column. It’s a one-off and won’t be repeated."
The introduction to the MacKenzie column said: "In the first of a new weekly column, Kelvin MacKenzie has plans for the future of our classrooms, Masterchef and even some timely advice for student investors."
The Liverpool Daily Post reports that the column prompted a furious backlash on Merseyside where MacKenzie has never been forgiven for publishing the infamous 1989 front page THE TRUTH which blamed Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough football disaster in which 96 people died.
MacKenzie abruptly left the Daily Mail after just under a year as a columnist in July 2012, telling readers: "Due to my increasing commercial workload, I have decided to give up the column after today to concentrate on my businesses. Thank you for your time over the past year."
MacKenzie caused some embarassment for Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre at the beginning of the Leveson Inquiry in October 2011, when he addressed a Leveson seminar and said: "God help me that free speech comes down to the thought process of a judge who couldn't win when prosecuting counsel against Ken Dodd for tax evasion and more recently robbing the Christmas Island veterans of a substantial pay-off for being told to simply turn away from nuclear test blasts in the Fifties."
MacKenzie was tempted back to The Sun (the paper he edited from 1981 to 1994) as a columnist by then editor Rebekah Wade in 2005, leaving to join the Daily Mail in 2011.
MacKenzie's first weekly column took aim at teachers ("more in common with the dockers of the Sixties or the miners of the Eighties than professionals") and Masterchef's Greg Wallace ("he reminds me why I shouldn't go on WeightWatchers") – among other targets.
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