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…