When Jeremy Pax­man engages, he is an excel­lent presenter. When he is bored…not so much. The clip below shows what hap­pens when News­night attempts to recre­ate the kind of boor­ish con­ver­sa­tion that would not have passed for debate in ye olde Eng­lish pub of thirty years ago.

By using con­tro­ver­sial­ists like Oborne, and an ex-journalist Lam­bert, as a proxy for opin­ion, the pro­gramme does no one a service.

Instead of being edgy and inform­at­ive, Oborne is allowed to simply hijack the stu­dio floor.

A prop­erly briefed Pax­man could have taken on a real offi­cial forensic­ally — and actu­ally “held someone to account”. Isn’t that what News­night was sup­posed to do?

Instead Pax­man is asked to ring­mas­ter a largely power­less array of opin­ion ped­dlers. Mean­while, if you’ve never seen a snake charmer bit­ten by a cobra…