C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas le journalisme

Andrew Neil is the best political interviewer in Britain. I am not just saying that because he is so high up here at The Spectator, although that helps. I am not saying it because he once bought me lunch, although he did his cause no harm there either.

I am saying it because he is one of the few broadcasters who makes me stop what I am doing and listen. God help the interviewee who goes on his programme unprepared. If he or she has not thought through every flaw in their argument, they will find that Neil has done their thinking for them. He will expose their contradictions on live television. He will have a list of the inconvenient facts they forgot or never took the trouble to find in the first place, and will broadcast them to the nation.

As for his message to the ‘loser jihadists’ and ‘Islamist scumbags’ who bombed Paris, it was one of the finest moments in recent television history.