Car crash interviews, election edition — the hall of infamy

Diane Abbott had a painful experience on LBC radio on Tuesday morning at the hands of Nick Ferrari, one of its top presenters. The shadow home secretary was unable to answer some fairly straightforward questions about how Labour intends to pay for 10,000 new police officers — and was even flexible on how many there would be.

But Ms Abbott can take comfort from the fact that she is far from being the first politician to find themselves skewered in a television or radio interview.

Natalie Bennett

Ms Bennett, the former leader of the Green party, was another politician to suffer a car crash encounter with Mr Ferrari when, in the run-up to the last general election in 2015, she struggled to explain her party’s housing policy and how it was costed. That interview came hot on the heels of a similarly bruising encounter with Andrew Neill on The Sunday Politics, this time on the citizen’s basic income. Ms Bennett said later she had suffered a “brain fade”.

Boris Johnson

In 2013 Mr Johnson, when mayor of London, came up against Eddie Mair, standing in as presenter of the Andrew Marr Show on the BBC. Mr Mair confronted the London mayor (as he was at the time) over various episodes in his past and concluded: “You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?”

Michael Howard

In one of the most famous grillings on British television, Jeremy Paxman asked Mr Howard, then the Conservative home secretary, the same question 12 times in an interview in 1997, the year the Tories lost to Tony Blair’s New Labour in an electoral landslide.

Chloe Smith

Ms Smith was a junior Treasury minister when she became another Paxman victim in 2012, after she was put up in front of the cameras to explain a George Osborne U-turn on fuel duty. However, Mr Osborne and the Treasury probably got as much criticism as she did for letting an inexperienced minister wander into the lion’s den.

Sarah Palin

Further afield, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential candidate electrified the 2008 US presidential race when she was nominated — until her lack of knowledge of current affairs began to take some of the shine off. Here she is, not long before the election, apparently unable to name a single newspaper or magazine she regularly reads. “All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years. I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.”

Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson

Iceland’s prime minister walked out of an interview when pressed about his private tax affairs at the time of the Panama Papers leak. Pressed on his and his wife’s relationship to an offshore company called Wintris, Mr Gunnlaugsson said the journalists were asking “totally inappropriate” questions.

George W Bush

Back in 1999, Mr Bush, then still governor of Texas, was unable to name the presidents or prime ministers of four foreign countries. (He couldn’t do Chechnya or India, got half of Taiwan right — “Lee” — and knew the “new Pakistani general”.)

Tony Abbott

The former Australian prime minister was still opposition leader when he was asked in an interview about an insensitive remark he had made regarding the death of a soldier in Afghanistan. Instead of speaking, he chose to give the interviewer a long stare, accompanied by nods.

Gordon Brown

Back to Britain, and here is the moment the former Labur prime minister was recorded insulting a Rochdale pensioner, Gillian Duffy, when he thinks the microphone is off.

John Nott

Finally, one from the archives: Mr Nott, a Tory minister under Margaret Thatcher, walks out of an interview with Robin Day in 1982.