LBC presenters are under no obligation to be impartial – quite the opposite – but in the run up to the referendum he tried to be as even-handed as he could, he says. Should Google and Facebook be forced to pay publishers for content? wrong Brexit It is though – ironically – on radio where his face has really come into its own. Looking back on the sorry excuse for a year just ended, though, I’d argue it’s hard to overlook the claims of James O’Brien. But then the idea that, say, Hillary Clinton’s key aide was behind the abduction of Madeleine McCann – I mean how do you have a phone-in about that? It was basic manners. Sun 8 Jan 2017 04.30 EST He left school at 15 to make tea at the Shipley Times and Express in West Yorkshire. The other thing, he says, is the knowledge that he is making the right enemies. All figures quoted include listening across all platforms, including online. On the way to see O’Brien last week, I was listening to his show, which featured two of 2017’s opening soliloquies. Despite liberal positions on most issues, regular listeners to his show know he is a traditionalist in some areas, particularly about the institution of marriage, straight or gay. But his opinionated approach flies in the face of strict BBC guidelines on impartiality, which have recently been applied to presenters who have taken a stance on BBC pay equality – resulting in some being taken off the air. Some people actually fall for his doomsday scenario and have become genuinely scared. If I had a newspaper column it would be once a week and unanswerable. Now we know: political correctness prevented them saying ‘don’t speak Polish on my bus’ and ‘don’t wear a headscarf to read the news’. I mean, when the VIP child-abuse stuff started breaking, it ceased to be extraordinary to have a caller begin by saying: ‘I have never told anyone this before’”. The trick was: don’t put anyone through until you get a good one. He had set some of those fears out in a short book published in 2015 called Loathe Thy Neighbour in which he observed how the narrowing of debate on immigration could only end one way. “From the very first week I did this show, I kept hearing about political correctness,” he says. The broadcaster is an open critic of Brexit and US President Donald Trump, views which he airs on his daily LBC radio show. Sometimes last year he found a convincing righteous anger, as for example at the absence of contrition of Kelvin MacKenzie (and his “capo di capi” Rupert Murdoch) in the wake of the Hillsborough verdict. The day after we meet it is announced that Nigel Farage, for a long time a guest host, has agreed to take up a regular evening slot at LBC. The other, which proved more seductive to callers, was that there was a plan “but it was best kept inside Theresa May’s head”. “I could certainly hear it coming,” he says. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. What do you even think you mean when you say that?” O’Brien asked at one particularly heated point. I put to him my proposition that he has become the authentic face of angst in 2016, the Ancient Mariner of Trump and Brexit, and he laughs broadly at the idea.

James O’Brien has parted ways with BBC’s Newsnight. There were many obvious candidates for Britain’s face of 2016. © copyright 2020 Press Gazette Ltd. Made in Taiwan. Just because we film it now, I don’t think there is any face-palming for the cameras from me. Often, though, O’Brien’s expression was one of genuine bafflement as the daily drama went from flotilla on the Thames, to Gove and his Lady Macbeth, to the unfolding reality show of the American election. This page has the latest official audience figures. James O'Brien is divisive, patronising, bullying and repetitive. He’s adamant that the fated expression is just the way his face sits, that it’s physiognomy not psychodrama.