Who is Andrew Neil?

Neil began his professional journalistic career in Scotland. After a spell working for the Conservative Party he moved to The Economist in 1973, and moved through the ranks to become the editor of the Britain sections.

Andrew Neil was appointed the editor of The Sunday Times in 1983, a position he held until 1994.

He then became a contributor to The Daily Mail, and became editor-in-chief of the Press Holdings newspapers including The Scotsman, The Business and The European.

In 2008 he was promoted to Chairman of the Press Holding Group and ITP Media Group, which includes The Spectator and Apollo Magazine.

Broadcasting Career

Neil was instrumental in setting up Sky TV, becoming founding chairman with Rupert Murdoch in 1988.

Neil provided political comment to the BBC while working at The Sunday Times, before getting his own Channel 4 interview series Is This Your Life?

In 2003 Neil started presenting two live political programmes for the BBC, This Week and Daily Politics (now Politics Live). He hosted more political interviews on Straight Talk with Andrew Neil on the BBC News Channel for three years and Sunday Politics on BBC1 for five years.

He has since been a key component of BBC election night coverage, interviewing celebrities on the River Thames in 2010 and political figures in the studio in 2015.

As with this year, he interviewed five party leaders in The Andrew Neil Interviews in the run up to the 2017 general election.

Andrew Neil Today

Neil stepped down as the host of This Week earlier this year, prompting the end of the show after 15 years in July 2019. Neil continues to host Politics Live, and began presenting new gig The Andrew Neil Show in September 2019.

You might have spotted Andrew Neil's interview of American conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on Politics Live online recently, as the clip went viral after Shapiro decided to walked out of the interview.

He has now established himself as one of, if not the, toughest political interviewer out there, grilling several party leaders in the run up to the 2019 elections and became part of a media frenzy and political controversy when Boris Johnson so far refused to take part.

Expect to see Neil's no-nonsense commentary on TV a lot during the ongoing election coverage - there are still several days to go...