Andrew Neil
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Andrew Ferguson Neil (born May 21 1949, Paisley) is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster. Neil made his name at The Sunday Times where he was editor for 11 years. In 1995 he was made editor-in-chief of the Press Holdings group of newspapers, owner of The Business and (from 2005) The Spectator. Press Holdings sold The Scotsman in December 2005, ending Neil's relationship with the newspaper.
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Early life and career
The son of a professional soldier who'd worked his way up through the ranks, Neil was educated at Paisley Grammar School and the University of Glasgow, graduating with an MA in politics. After graduation he briefly worked for the Conservative Party as a research assistant before joining The Economist as a correspondent in 1973. He was later promoted to Britain Editor of that news magazine before being offered the chair of Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times. He was editor there from 1983 until 1994.
His editorship was controversial. Neil, it was argued, was appointed over more experienced colleagues, such as Hugo Young. The Sunday Times during this period promoted a fringe and later discredited argument that, in Africa, AIDS was a quite separate condition from HIV. Opposition to perceived public school and Oxbridge attitudes were a hallmark of Neil's Sunday Times editorship, but unusually he criticised such attitudes from a New Right starting point rather than a left-wing one, which has led some to perceive him as a quintessential Wienerite.
The newspaper also lost a libel case over claims it had made concerning a witness interviewed in the Death on the Rock documentary on the Gibraltar shootings. Neil lost a second defamation case when he sued Sir Peregrine Worsthorne over claims that he was unfit to edit a serious newspaper following the Bordes case (see below). Neil won £1000 and costs. He also employed Holocaust denier David Irving in 1992 on the basis that Irving was one of the few people who could read German gothic typography.
Sky
In 1988 he also became founding chairman of Sky TV, also part of Murdoch's News Corporation. Neil was instrumental in the company's launch, overseeing the transformation of a down market, single channel satellite service into a four channel network in less than a year. Neil and Murdoch stood side by side at Sky's new headquarters in west London on February 5 1989 to witness the launch of the service at 18.00. Sky was not an instant success, the uncertainty caused by the competition provided by British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) and the initial shortage of satellite dishes were early problems.
The failure of BSB in November 1990 led to a merger, although few programmes acquired by BSB found their way to Sky One and BSB's satellites were sold. The new company was called British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). The merger may have saved Sky financially; despite its popularity, Sky had very few major advertisers to begin with, and was also beginning to suffer from embarrassing breakdowns. Acquiring BSB's healthier advertising contracts and equipment apparently solved these problems. BSkyB would not make a profit for a decade but is now one of the most profitable and successful television companies in Europe.
Break with News Corp
He eventually parted company with Murdoch on bad terms and became a writer for the Daily Mail. In 1996 he became editor-in-chief of the Barclay brothers Press Holdings group of newspapers, owner of The Scotsman, Sunday Business (now just The Business) and The European. Neil has not enjoyed great success with the circulations of the newspapers (indeed The European folded shortly after he took over).
As well as Neil's newspaper activities he has also maintained a television career. While working at The Economist he provided news reports, for example to American networks. When at The Sunday Times he contributed to BBC radio and television as well as commenting on the various controversies provoked by the paper in his role as Editor. During the 1990s Neil fronted political programmes for the BBC, notably Despatch Box on BBC Two. Following the revamp of the BBC's political programming in early 2003 Neil has been the presenter of the BBC One weekly political roundup show, This Week, and co-presenter of The Daily Politics which broadcasts every day that Parliament sits. In November 2004 it was announced that Neil was to become Chief Executive of The Spectator. Neil served as Lord Rector of St Andrews University from 1999 - 2002.
Andrew Neil, Law-suits & Private Eye
Neil is not married. A photograph of him dressed in a vest and baseball cap, embracing a much younger woman, ran over several consecutive editions of satirical magazine Private Eye, after it became known that he found the picture embarrassing. It still surfaces periodically, on the flimsiest of excuses. The photograph is apparently of a woman Neil was briefly involved with while in the United States in the early nineties [1] and is frequently accompanied in the paper by jokes about the woman's ethnicity. Neil has found "fascinating" what he sees as an example of "public school racism" on the part of the Eye's editorial staff.
The magazine has also nicknamed him Brillo Pad, after his toupee, which is said to resemble a scouring pad. In addition, it often misspells his surname with an extra L - which also annoys him - in memory of Neil's affair with the former Miss India Pamella Bordes, whose name is also written with an unusual number of Ls. Whilst at The Sunday Times, he met Bordes, whom the News of the World suggested was an up-market prostitute, in a nightclub in 1988. This led to Neil bringing a libel action against Sir Peregrine Worsthorne following an article he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph in which it was asserted that he was not fit to edit a Sunday newspaper. Neil won £1,000 and costs. A much commented-upon revelation from Bordes was that Neil's hair-dye stained the pillow-cases.
Neil often castigates the British establishment, many of whom he deemed to be politically correct but snobbish or ethnically-biased in their perceptions. Teaming up with Tory ex-leadership candidate and maverick, Michael Portillo, and Hackney left-leaning MP, Diane Abbott, (an improbable combination where the chemistry on his The Week TV show seems to work well) has helped to soften his image and widen his appeal after he was judged not to be a suitable presenter of the BBC's flagship show Newsnight.
External links
- Archive of Neil's recent articles at The Scotsman
- Observer: Biography
- BBC News: Biography
- "The Daily Politics" website
- Toby Young article in Vanity Fair
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Categories: 1949 births | Living people | Natives of Renfrewshire | Newspaper publishers of the 21st century (people) | Scottish journalists | Scottish magazine editors | Scottish newspaper editors | Scottish television presenters | University of Glasgow alumni | University of St Andrews | UK Conservative Party politicians