Don’t get rid of Andrew Neil, Auntie!
He may have sacked me but the BBC shouldn’t fire its best interviewer
These days there are certain qualifications if you want to get on at the BBC.
There must of course be no suggestion that you are right-wing. It’s preferable to be a woman, if possible under 50. And it will do you no harm at all if you come from a BAME background.
Andrew Neil fails on every count. He is known to be right-wing. For goodness’ sake, he once worked for Rupert Murdoch! At 71, he is past the Corporation’s preferred sell-by date, and there’s no doubting he is a fully-fledged member of the male sex. Oh, and hailing as he does from north of the border, he’s also white as white can be.
So I suppose the wonder is that he has survived as long as he has. The final coup de grâce may not be long away. No doubt thinking he had nothing to lose by being frank, Mr Neil recently opened up to the Radio Times.
He suggested that he was ‘surplus to requirements’ and might leave. ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ he said. ‘There’s no clarity at the moment, so I am just waiting for the BBC to make up its mind.’
The truth is that they never really liked him. As Auntie’s most forensic and politically best-informed interviewer since Robin Day, he should have been given a prime slot on BBC2’S Newsnight long ago.
In the event, he has been forced to make do with fronting politics programmes at odd hours of the day and night when normal people tend to be doing other things. Recently even these have been either axed or cut back.
Last year, BBC1’S late-night show The Week was killed off after 16 years. Though not always as funny as Mr Neil appeared to believe it was, it was arguably television’s most informative programme about politics.
The other quiver in Andrew Neil’s bow has been BBC2’S late-morning Politics
Live, which he co-hosts with Jo Coburn. This has been reduced to one show a week, and the word is that it too may be destined for the scrap heap.
Naturally the Corporation won’t admit to nurturing a prejudice against the pugnacious Scot. Some sources lay one alleged misdemeanour at his door. When, last December, Boris Johnson refused to submit to a pre-election grilling by Mr Neil – no doubt fearing he would be torn to shreds – the thwarted interviewer delivered a one-and-a-halfminute tirade against the Prime Minister, accusing him of, among other things, untrustworthiness.
Acute observers noted that Mr Neil’s distaste for Mr Johnson dated back to the days when he was chief executive of the Spectator and the future PM its independent-minded editor.
Andrew Neil’s out-of-character diatribe was unwise, and it gave the Government a legitimate grievance against the BBC, with which it was already at loggerheads. But I hardly think it justifies the BBC’S getting rid of him.
Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis recently launched into a rant against Mr Johnson and his adviser Dominic Cummings which lasted almost as long as Mr Neil’s less vitriolic outburst. And yet she continues to appear as the programme’s number-one honcho, looking very much like the cat that has got the cream.
By the way, I should say that I hold no personal brief for Mr Neil. He sacked me – via an underling – from the Spectator, where I had written a column for nearly a decade, immediately after Boris had stood down as editor. We don’t go on holiday together. I just think he is an exceptionally good interviewer.
He seldom betrays his own views, and is usually as hard on right-wing politicians as on left-wing ones. Unlike many modern interviewers, he wants to find out the truth rather than acquire a scalp or shake the whole political system to its foundations.
If he does leave the Beeb, he will certainly know where his next meal is coming from, owning as he does a flat in Manhattan and a house in the South of France. He still presides at the Spectator and is publisher of some small though lucrative Middle Eastern publications. He’ll be fine. Another channel might snap him up.
It will just be sad if the modern, right-on BBC can no longer offer a home to the best political interviewer of his generation because his face doesn’t fit.
Ten years ago, clever clogs said folk would never pay for newspapers online.
The Times nonetheless unveiled its online subscription with the Sunday Times. Foolish, said many. Papers won’t be noticed behind a paywall.
A decade later, the two publications jointly boast 300,000 digital subscriptions. Their print circulation has fallen – though not as precipitously as that of some titles. After years of heavy losses on the daily title, the papers made a pre-tax profit last year of £3.75 million.
Meanwhile, the Guardian remains free online. It has a huge audience, and is famous in America. But its print sales have plummeted and, despite costcutting, it is still losing money.
Who took the wiser path?