Brillo In Tears - Boo Sodding Hoo

Ultimately, he departed Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) with a payoff not unadjacent to stuff all. But for former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil, it wasn’t about the money, oh no. Even though his contract was allegedly worth a cool £4 million. No, walking away was an act of self-preservation, of maintaining his dignity.

This process is what has led him to tell all to the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker, taking out a king-size onion in no style at all: “'GB News is just a disaster. I came close to a breakdown. It would've killed me to carry on. I HAD to quit': ANDREW NEIL breaks down in tears in his first interview since his exit from channel he helped create”.

DAHLINGS! It was GHASTLY!! Do go on: “it comes as a surprise when Andrew Neil starts to cry and confesses to me how he nearly succumbed to mental collapse, broken by his experience at GB News … ’I came close to a breakdown,’ he confesses, tears falling … His reputation was in the hands of, as he sees it, amateurs who could destroy his 48-year record of unrivalled success built on rigour and professionalism”. Bwahahahahaha!

“48-year record of unrivalled success built on rigour and professionalism”? As Billy Connolly once said, there’s going to be some swearing … FUCK OFF! AIDS denialism, hiring David Irving, and the libelling of Carmen Proetta that meant the Sunday Times having to stump up £150,000 in damages? That kind of success and professional rigour?

Had that libel award been made today, and not in the late 1980s, you could have added a zero to the payout. Worse, he seems to have forgotten that he’s still chairman of the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine, which ploughs the same furrow of bigotry as GB News, but does it in an upmarket typeface, fronted by a faux-posh editor.

When he moans “I do feel angry though about what they’ve done to a beautiful dream. This was a vision that might have worked. But if you watch the constant themes that come through again and again from the shock jockeys on GB News, the perception is ‘we hate migrants, we hate the NHS, we hate lockdown and we hate Meghan Markle’”, you have to wonder if he ever reads the Speccy - before rocking up at their summer party.

There was little sympathy for Brillo, with Nels Abbey, who caused The Great Man such discomfort on BBC Question Time, noting “Every word I said about Andrew Neil & GB News on Question Time has now been confirmed -by Andrew Neil- to be true”. As for that walking away with no payoff, Alex Andreou had something to say about that.

“Andrew Neil took a business risk that stood to make him a very wealthy man, had it worked out. And had it worked out, he would still be crowing ‘go woke, get broke’, like he did when figures in the first few days looked good. He’s a mercenary distancing himself from his failure”. And Hussein Kesvani had something to say about all that rigour.

“Sorry but if Andrew Neil genuinely didn’t know what GB news was or where its audience came from, it’s more proof that he really isn’t a good journalist at all, and had the good fortune of being a media person in a book period and having the BBC support him unconditionally”. Basically, no-one cares about Brillo’s blubbering.

He’s not a media messiah. And no-one cares if he’s a very naughty boy. Sad, really.

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