This Week is axed by BBC after host Andrew Neil calls it quits

TO MANY viewers, he was a breath of fresh air challenging the BBC’s political correctness.

But yesterday the corporation said it will axe Andrew Neil’s This Week politics show, following his resignation.

The programme, broadcast after Question Time on Thursdays, will remain on screens until July. But BBC bosses said they would not bring it back without Mr Neil, pictured, to anchor it.

Fran Unsworth, director of news, said: ‘We couldn’t imagine This Week without the inimitable Andrew Neil, one of Britain’s best political interviewers.

‘After 16 years, Andrew is bowing out of late-night presenting on the show, at the top of his game.’

Mr Neil, 69 – born in Paisley, Renfrewshire – told bosses he no longer wanted to work such late nights. He will continue to front Politics Live on Thursdays and the BBC said it will keep him ‘at the heart’ of its political coverage.

But many fans of the presenter – who has an MA in political economy and political science from the University of Glasgow – will be sad to see the end of This Week, which had attracted a loyal following.

The show made an unlikely comic duo out of former Tory MP Michael Portillo and Labour’s Diane Abbott, who frequently reduced each other to giggles with their exchanges.

Mr Neil, a former editor of The Sunday Times, is known for mixing combative interviews with on-screen banter.

He also has a reputation for telling it like it is, even if it horrifies the BBC’s more Left-wing audiences.

Shortly after the Paris terror attack in 2015, he used This Week to launch a 90-second tirade against ‘Islamist scumbags’ and ‘loser jihadists’.

Viewers praised it as a ‘magnificent’ piece of broadcasting which ‘captured the public mood’ but BBC staff said he broke the broadcaster’s impartiality rules.

Mr Neil married Susan Nilsson, a Swedish PR chief, in 2015 in France. The ceremony was attended only by Deal Or No Deal host Noel Edmonds and his wife.