Andrew Neil

Ever since I left the 'Sunday Times' there has been a group of scribes waiting for me to fall on my face, and having a go at my commercial record, looking to pick holes in it.

Whereas people increasingly get their news from the Internet, magazines have a different atmospheric to them. A magazine is something you sit down and relax with.

Americans have this patrician attitude that they have a God-given right to produce these boring newspapers and not be challenged to do it. 'The New York Times' really thinks it's the BBC.

When one English person speaks, another one immediately classifies him. No class system in the world is so audible, which is also why it is so pernicious and enduring.

When I was at Paisley Grammar we were equipped to compete with the private-school kids - and encouraged to do so. The sky was the limit, provided we had ability, ambition and a capacity for hard work.

I made it clear when the Barclays took over the 'Telegraph' that I wanted no editorial position there. There is no way I could take a high-level editorial position at the papers. I have my work for the BBC, and that would be compromised if I did.

I haven't got a family. I live to work.

No one can be in any doubt that Britain is becoming more like Europe, though few in an increasingly economically illiterate media seem to realise it.

I don't even read 'the Sun' and it's my job to read everything that's politically important. I think that's a symbol of the declining power of the mainstream media.

With sad, depressing predictability, the children of today's underclass become tomorrow's criminals and dropouts.

As one of the grammar-school generation, I grew up as part of a postwar meritocracy that steadily infiltrated the citadels of power.