Hello, goodbye - Joe Grima

Joe Grima's latest outburst against a Catholic priest who wrote a somewhat contentious obituary on former prime minister Dom Mintoff ultimately cost him his job as a television host on Labour's One Television.

However, this was not the first time Grima's brusque language hit the headlines. In the 80s, Joe Grima - a former Labour minister and Mintoff acolyte - had famously called former PN leader Eddie Fenech Adami a "pouf."

Born in 1936 in Zejtun, Grima started off as a reporter at The Times of Malta where he occupied the post of sub-editor. In the late 50s he worked at the emigrants and refugees commission before joining the Rediffusion Company in 1961.

During his long career at the national broadcaster, Grima, a BBC-qualified producer, also served as head of programmes.

Later, he was also appointed chief executive at the Broadcasting Authority, during which his time he terrorised and physically assaulted employees.

Grima and his chauffeur punched and violently pushed onto a balcony Tony Mallia, who would later leave the authority to be appointed an editor with the PN's newspapers. Mallia was only saved by the timely intervention of a fellow authority employee.

Grima first entered the political fray in 1976 and was elected to Parliament thanks to a casual election for a seat vacated by the infamous Labour minister Lorry Sant.

Before being appointed minister in 1981, Grima was Mintoff's special envoy for Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. 

Following the 1981 perverted electoral result - in which Labour remained in power despite winning less votes than the PN - Grima vehemently defended Labour's right to hang on to power.

In the run-up to the 1987 election, Mintoff wanted to steer constitutional changes to guarantee the party with the largest amount of votes a majority of seats. Grima was the only person to vote against Mintoff, when the latter proposed such changes to the party's executive. However, Grima then voted in favour when the changes were discussed in parliament.

Grima was appointed industry and commerce ministry in 1981. He then became tourism minister in 1983. During this period, Grima will be best remembered for his rude and militant views: including calling Fenech Adami a 'Buda' and a 'pouf' in public meetings... only to later make a public apology.

After retiring from politics in 1992, he founded a private radio station known as Live FM, which he graced with his incisive talk shows and his nostalgic and often bizarre narratives of the Mintoff years.

Although being one of the staunchest critics of the Nationalist Party, the former Labour minister (who was a hate figure for the Fenech Adami administration), later allied himself with the same administration, and went as far as hosting a show on Net TV for almost seven years.

In the years following Alfred Sant's election as Labour leader in 1992, Grima re-emerged from political wilderness and anchored a discussion programme on the Nationalist Party's television station, openly supporting his former nemesis Eddie Fenech Adami.

In a drastic twist of fate, Grima bizarrely became a darling of the PN spin machine, who conveniently erased any reference to his time as Labour minister and Labour activist. His TV shows on Net Television were atypical thanks to their unique style, in which the host loved digging his teeth in Sant's New Labour.

His split from Labour was borne out of Grima's sour relationship with Sant.

Yet, after Sant's resignation and Joseph Muscat's election in 2008, Grima was once again welcomed back to the Labour Party, hosting a television show on Labour's One Television and being a noisy and indomitable critic of his original enemy - the Nationalist Party.

Grima returned to the fold on the invitation of Labour leader Joseph Muscat. But his return was short lived.

Following Mintoff's death last week, Grima angrily reacted to an obituary penned by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, published on the Catholic Herald.

Writing on his Facebook wall, Grima told Fr Lucie-Smith to 'fuck off'' and that he should have 'paedophile' priests to 'show [him] the ropes'. An unrelenting Grima not only failed to apologise but a few days later he referred to former EU Permanent Representative Richard Cachia Caruana as 'Rich il-puff'.

After causing a huge public uproar, Labour leader Joseph Muscat did his best to dissociate himself from Grima and the former minister submitted his resignation. 

Muscat accepted the resignation of former Labour minister Joe Grima as the presenter of One TV chat-show Inkontri, after disassociating himself from comments Grima's comments. In Grima's letter, which the PL publicised, the former parliamentary secretary for industry under premier Dom Mintoff said that his reaction to Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith's obituary - 'Dom Mintoff, a dominant figure in Malta for 30 years, did great harm to his country' - was "certainly inappropriate".

"I feel that neither you nor the Labour Party should in any way pay a price for what was, in every way, a slip-up which is being turned into one attack after another on you and on the party."

Muscat said that he could never accept such language. "Grima is absolutely not a face of the Labour Party nor a strategist. If it had been said on One TV, action could be taken by the Labour Party."

However in his concluding remarks to Muscat, the larger then life broadcaster said: "I remain totally dedicated to your cause as Labour leader, to your ideals and to you personally. I wish every success. I know that you and our country deserves it."