THE Echo would normally show solidarity with a fellow newspaper worker who has lost their job but in the case of Kelvin MacKenzie we are prepared to make an exception.

The columnist’s contract with the Sun has been "terminated by mutual consent", the paper’s publisher said yesterday. About time too.

It follows criticism over a cretinous opinion piece penned by MacKenzie in which he compared Everton footballer Ross Barkley, whose grandfather is Nigerian, to a gorilla.

Some columnists are paid to stir up controversy in a bid to fill their paper’s letters page with torrents of raging debate but MacKenzie’s bitter, backward-looking, bigotry should have no place at a modern media company.

The former Sun editor said there were "plenty of opportunities out there". Let’s hope that does not mean another paper will give MacKenzie a platform to spout his hateful claptrap.

He was editor of the Sun when it wrongly claimed that Liverpool fans were to blame for the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

In 2016, MacKenzie used his column to criticise Channel 4 News presenter Fatima Manji for wearing a hijab while reporting the Nice terror attacks.

Last month, he told The New York Times his ultimate fantasy headline would be: "Jeremy Corbyn Knifed By Asylum Seeker".

Like so many scoundrels MacKenzie used a quote from Churchill to try and make his latest bungle appear as if it was part of some colourful, buccaneering crusade, saying: "I agree with Winston Churchill who said: ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’."

The veteran provocateur might heed another Churchill aphorism: "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."