But when the IMF produced a study showing Piketty’s claim to be nonsense, this seemed to generate no interest at all. There were lots of other reasons why he was valuable too, of course, but this one was particular to him.

I know Morgan moved on – or stropped off – some time ago, but the idea for my book started here at GMB in the days when Susanna and Piers were a TV team. Charles Foster is perhaps best known for having spent six weeks living in a badger sett, munching on earthworms.Burley now feared, he said, that the BBC’s clash with Lineker in March over a tweet attacking government immigration policy was a damaging repeat of mistakes made in dealings with veteran political broadcaster Andrew Neil. But given what happened to him, it may be quite a while before anyone makes a television documentary asking the question again. While only a minority felt genuine “Ostalgie” (nostalgia for the East) after its fall, a larger number remember it wistfully while accepting its passing. Brexitcast was renamed Newscast after the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union on 31 January 2020.

Speaking to the Observer this weekend Burley, who previously produced the BBC’s live politics output, including The Andrew Marr Show , has attacked the corporation for losing many of its seasoned, heavyweight interviewers and for recent “arrogance” displayed in the public conflict with football presenter Gary Lineker. If you engage in frank discussions about certain topics – climate change, jihadi finance, immigration, transgenderism – then you can expect the equivalent of a lawsuit. He was hauled in front of a BBC star chamber, accused of supporting Tory policy, then found guilty of breaching guidelines on impartiality and accuracy. At the time, vaccine passports were very nearly introduced – on what now seems to be a false premise.Burley agrees that viewers’ trust has been shaken by the recent inquiry prompting the departure of BBC chairman Richard Sharp, the Tory party donor linked to organising a loan for Johnson, especially when taken together with Gibb’s seat on the board and Davie’s historic involvement with the local Conservative party politics. They discuss Brian Walden’s landmark 1989 interview with Margaret Thatcher, the impossible pressure put on the BBC, and the surrealism of the brief Liz Truss era. For his brazen 2016 book, Being a Beast, the vet turned law professor attempted to capture, on all fours if needed, what life might be like for some of the creatures that inhabit the edges of the human world.

The role was based in Westminster and led Burley to take responsibility for the programmes Daily Politics, Sunday Politics, This Week, The Westminster Hour and Newswatch. It’s no exaggeration to say that these encounters, between interviewers and politicians who rule us, are now a battle over truth. He looks at the techniques of questioners from Brian Walden and Andrew Marr to Sophy Ridge and Emily Maitlis and at politicians’ countermeasures.At a time in our political culture when truth matters more than ever but is in such short supply, I’m excited to be working with Joel at HarperNonFiction to take readers behind the scenes and reveal why those who lead us are so often ready to lie—and how they get away with it. The digital era has put rocket boosters on all this as offending articles are more easily shared by activists. a question famously asked by grand inquisitor Jeremy Paxman – is Rob Burley’s deliciously irreverent and gossipy insider’s account of 25 years working at the very top of British political television – and the unique insight he’s gained on the country’s politicians on the way. Any politician who is in charge has quite a lot of leverage, with allowing access and setting the agenda.