Sir Brian reacted as if he’d swallowed a cocktail stick . . .

TORY MP Philip Davies (Shipley) will go down as ‘the man who asked a top judge if he was telling the truth’. The Rt Hon Sir Brian Leveson reacted like a man who had just swallowed a cocktail stick. Sideways. Complete with glacé cherry.

Ask a leading beak if he was telling porkies! Mr Davies should make sure he keeps the right side of the law. One parking ticket, one dropped sweetie wrapper in a back street of Shipley, and he’ll be off to Tasmania.

The atrocity occurred at the Commons Culture Select Committee. It had fought long for the right to interrogate Sir Brian about his report into newspaper freedoms.

The Legal Establishment had argued (wisely, we soon saw) that the judge would be in peril of being politicised.

Sir Brian began to his own satisfaction, which may be his custom. After five minutes he announced that a ‘red line’ had been reached: he could not comment on some nicety because it would betray an opinion. As a judge, he was above such things. He spoke slowly in a fastidious manner, his right eyebrow flicking upward like the wrists of a flamenco dancer.

One answer, possibly one sentence, lasted eight minutes. Not that we were getting many words per minute. Sir Brian will never make it as a horse-racing commentator.

The committee’s Labour MPs listened with peachy pleasure. Ben Bradshaw (Lab, Exeter) kept laughing – ho, ho, ho – at Sir Brian’s cryptic drolleries. He gazed at the small, nutbrown eminence with crinkly-eyed rapture.

In the public seats, almost an entire row had been devoted to the Hacked Off lobby group. This lot chuckled, so superior in their appreciation of Sir B’s legalistic parries.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Lab, Bradford S), nice fellow but perhaps influenced by Mr Bradshaw, nodded heavy agreement as Sir Brian vouchsafed his pearls.

On Paul Farrelly (Lab, Newcastle-underLyme) there glistened the smile of a connoisseur listening to a plinkety-plonk Tippett symphony at the Festival Hall. The Tory MPs were greatly more sceptical. Tracey Crouch (Chatham & Aylesford) and Conor Burns (Bournemouth W) quizzed the judge like clever counsel. Sir Brian may have underestimated youthful Miss Crouch. Mr Bradshaw tried to put her off by laughing.

Answering Mr Burns, Sir Brian deployed courtly, faintly over- oiled self- deprecation. The words were still emerging at the rate of hand-moulded rum truffles.

Only when Mr Davies barged into proceedings – one of life’s foot-in-t’-door gumshoes, is Yorkshireman Phil – did Sir Brian’s composure snap. Who can blame him? One lives in cloistered comfort. One is accustomed to the court standing at one’s entrance. One is a robed magnifico of Her Majesty’s Justice.

One seldom has to spar with former bookies’ runners who are now trenchantly rightwing MPs. Ye gods, no.

Mr Davies: Was there anything in the Leveson Report that Sir Brian regretted? Sir Brian, after consideration, said he grieved at the existence of ‘some typos’ and one contested table of statistics.

QUITE extraordinary,’ said Mr Davies. Most of us make countless boobs every day. Sir Brian smiled, perhaps with pity. He said he was used to taking big decisions. ‘Sometimes they affect people’s lives,’ he murmured with Olympian grandeur.

Mr Davies, speaking without noticeable reverence, proceeded to quiz Sir Brian hard about research he had done into libel damages. Sir Brian’s eyebrow wriggled.

Now we plunged below the navel. Mr Davies raised the intriguing love affair between one of Sir Brian’s helpers and one of the barristers who attacked Fleet Street during the Leveson Inquiry. Had Sir Brian known about this romance? ‘No.’ It was spoken coldly.

Mr Davies: ‘ Really?’ Oh! Ohhhhhh! How dare anyone say ‘really?’ to a lord of the law? Sir Brian’s eyes blazed. ‘Pardon?’ he spluttered. ‘Pardon?’ Has no one ever questioned his word before?

He should get out more. Scepticism is the very basis of that flea-bitten beast he seeks to tame: the doggy, disputatious, liberty-enhancing Press.