Andrew Neil
Andrew Ferguson Neil FRSA (born 21 May 1949) is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster who is chairman of The Spectator. He was editor of The Sunday Times from 1983 to 1994. He has presented various political programmes on the BBC and on Channel 4.
This article is about the journalist and broadcaster. For the Scottish footballer, see Andy Neil (footballer). For the English cricketer, see Andrew Neal.
Andrew Neil
Journalist, broadcaster
- This Week (2003–2019)
- Daily Politics (2003–2018)
- Sunday Politics (2012–2017)
- The Economist
- The Spectator
- Apollo magazine
- Politics Live (2018–2020)
- The Andrew Neil Show on BBC (2019–2020)
- The Andrew Neil Show on Channel 4 (2022–2023)
Born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Neil attended Paisley Grammar School, before studying at the University of Glasgow. He entered journalism in 1973 as a correspondent for The Economist.
Neil was appointed editor of The Sunday Times by Rupert Murdoch in 1983, and held this position until 1994. After this, he became a contributor to the Daily Mail. He was chief executive and editor-in-chief of Press Holdings Media Group. In 1988, he became founding chairman of Sky TV, also part of Murdoch's News Corporation. He worked for the BBC for 25 years until 2020, fronting various programmes, including Sunday Politics and This Week on BBC One and Daily Politics, Politics Live and The Andrew Neil Show on BBC Two. Since 2008 he has been chairman of Press Holdings, whose titles include The Spectator, and ITP Media Group. Following his departure from the BBC, he became founding chairman of GB News and a presenter on the channel, but resigned in September 2021. He later joined Channel 4 in 2022 as presenter of The Andrew Neil Show, which shared the same name as his former BBC Two programme.
Early life[edit]
Neil was born on 21 May 1949[1] in Paisley, Renfrewshire, to Mary and James Neil.[2] His mother worked in cotton mills during World War II and his father ran the wartime Cairo fire brigade, worked as an electrician and was a major in the Territorial Army in Renfrewshire.[3][4][5] He grew up in the Glenburn area and attended the local Lancraigs Primary School. At 11, Neil passed the qualifying examination and obtained entrance to the selective Paisley Grammar School.[6]
After school, Neil attended the University of Glasgow,[7] where he edited the student newspaper, the Glasgow University Guardian, and dabbled in student television. He was a member of the Dialectic Society and the Conservative Club, and participated in Glasgow University Union inter-varsity debates. In 1971, he was chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students. He graduated in 1971, with an MA with honours in political economy and political science.[7][8] He had been tutored by Vince Cable and had a focus on American history.[9][10]
Political positions[edit]
War in Afghanistan[edit]
Neil was a vocal and enthusiastic proponent of British military involvement in Afghanistan. Neil derided those who opposed the war as "wimps with no will to fight", while labelling The Guardian as The Daily Terrorist and the New Statesman as the New Taliban for publishing dissenting opinions about the wisdom of British military involvement.[99][100] For questioning whether "Bush and Blair are leading us deeper and deeper into a quagmire", Neil ridiculed Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover, calling him "woolly, wimpy" and "juvenile".[99] He compared Tony Blair to Winston Churchill and Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler, while describing the United States invasion of Afghanistan as a "calibrated response" and a "patient, precise and successful deployment of US military power".[99][101]
War in Iraq[edit]
Neil was an early advocate of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, describing the case for war and regime change advanced by Tony Blair and George W. Bush as "convincing" and "masterful".[101] In 2002, Neil wrote that Iraq had "embarked on a worldwide shopping spree to buy the technology and material needed to construct weapons of mass destruction – and the missile systems needed to deliver them across great distances", and that "the suburbs of Baghdad are now dotted with secret installations, often posing as hospitals or schools, developing missile fuel, bodies and guidance systems, chemical and biological warheads and, most sinister of all, a renewed attempt to develop nuclear weapons."[101] He wrote that Saddam Hussein would provide Al-Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction, and that Saddam had links to the September 11 attacks.[101][102]
Climate change[edit]
Neil has been accused of rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change and was criticised for frequently inviting non-scientists and climate change deniers to deny climate change on his BBC programmes.[103][104][105][106] In 2012, Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said that Neil had "rarely, if ever, included a climate scientist in any of its debates about global warming" on his BBC programme Daily Politics.[107] Ward wrote in The Guardian in 2011 that Neil let inaccurate and misleading statements about climate change go unchallenged on Daily Politics.[103]
In November 2020, Neil said that climate change was real and needed to be confronted. He criticised protests by Extinction Rebellion on Remembrance Day, stating: "I've interviewed Extinction Rebellion on several occasions and most of what they say is total nonsense or total exaggeration."[108]
HIV/AIDS[edit]
During Neil's time as editor, The Sunday Times backed a campaign to falsely claim that HIV was not a cause of AIDS.[31][109][110][111] In 1990, The Sunday Times serialised a book by an American right-winger who rejected the scientific consensus on the causes of AIDS, and who falsely claimed that AIDS could not spread to heterosexuals.[110] Articles and editorials in The Sunday Times cast doubt on the scientific consensus, described HIV as a "politically correct virus" about which there was a "conspiracy of silence," disputed that AIDS was spreading in Africa, claimed that tests for HIV were invalid, described the HIV/AIDS treatment drug azidothymidine (AZT) as harmful, and characterised the World Health Organization (WHO) as an "Empire-building AIDS [organisation]."[110]
The pseudoscientific coverage of HIV/AIDS in The Sunday Times led the scientific journal Nature to monitor the newspaper's coverage and to publish letters rebutting the falsehoods printed in The Sunday Times.[110] In response to this, The Sunday Times published an article headlined "AIDS – why we won't be silenced", which said that Nature engaged in censorship and "sinister intent".[110] In his 1996 book, Full Disclosure, Neil wrote that his HIV/AIDS denialism "deserved publication to encourage debate."[110] That same year, he wrote that The Sunday Times had been vindicated in its coverage, "The Sunday Times was one of a handful of newspapers, perhaps the most prominent, which argued that heterosexual Aids was a myth. The figures are now in and this newspaper stands totally vindicated... The history of Aids is one of the great scandals of our time. I do not blame doctors and the Aids lobby for warning that everybody might be at risk in the early days, when ignorance was rife and reliable evidence scant." He criticised the "AIDS establishment" and said "Aids had become an industry, a job-creation scheme for the caring classes."[112]
In a 2021 interview Neil said that he now regretted certain aspects of the paper's coverage of HIV and AIDS, but he was unwilling or unable to accept any personal responsibility for the falsehoods published while he was editor. Neil chose instead to blame an employee, stating that he had placed faith in a trusted correspondent who was found to be wrong.[113]
Republicanism[edit]
In January 1997, ITV broadcast a live television debate Monarchy: The Nation Decides, in which Neil spoke in favour of establishing a republic.[114] When asked in 2021 by the BBC if he was still a republican, he changed his mind, saying "Not really."[115]
Private Eye[edit]
The British satirical and investigative journalism magazine Private Eye has referred to Neil by the nickname "Brillo" after his wiry hair, which is seen as bearing a resemblance to a Brillo Pad, a brand of scouring pad.[116]
In a long-running joke, a photograph of Neil wearing a vest and baseball cap in an embrace with a much younger woman (often mistaken for Pamella Bordes, a former Miss India, but really an African American make-up artist with whom Neil was once involved)[3] appeared regularly in the letters page of the magazine for some years, and is still used occasionally. Typically, a reader will ask the editor if he has any photographs relevant to some topical news item, frequently with a veiled allusion to the age-gap between two individuals, or to ethnic diversity. By double entendre, the letter can be construed as a request for this photo, which is duly published alongside.[117] Neil claims to find it "fascinating" and an example of "public school racism" on the part of the magazine's editorial staff.[3]
Personal life[edit]
Neil is a resident of France and also has homes in London and New York.[118][119] Neil married Susan Nilsson on 8 August 2015.[120][121]
Neil has threatened to sue the American businesswoman and former lover of Boris Johnson, Jennifer Arcuri, over claims she made on Twitter linking Neil to the billionaire and child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, as well as other Twitter users who retweeted or endorsed her now-deleted tweet.[122] Neil denies ever meeting Epstein and argues he was put in his infamous "black book" by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's procurer.[123]
Neil considers himself an expert in Italian rap music.[124]