Radio commentator Ray Hadley has never been one to mince words.

So it was perhaps appropriate that the NSW Supreme Court judge who slapped the broadcaster and his employer - radio station 2GB - with a $280,000 damages order on Thursday didn't either.

In a scathing judgment, Acting Justice Henric Nicholas described Mr Hadley's attack on Carlingford fish and chip shop owner, Kim Ahmed, as an ''unbridled tirade … spat into the microphone for the consumption of the audience''.

''An award of the court which operates to vindicate her reputation should enable the plaintiff to lay this broadcast to rest in the gutter from which it came,'' his honour said.