Skipper

Did you see it? It was woeful I thought from Griffin's point of view. The panel were very well prepared- had read all the damning quotes and had them to hand, had seen the Youtube clips of him actually speaking the offending quotations, so his claims of being misquoted carried little weight.

Baroness Warsi was particularly effective and the Tories clearly have a potential star here. Jack Straw was a bit bumbling I thought but made some telling points in his somewhat wordy way.

I actually felt a bit sorry for the silly man at times, so effectively was his pretence of being 'just a concerned patriot' dismantled. If this is the best he can do British political culture has little to worry about.

For democracy, free speech and British values of toleration, not to mention the BBC's obligation to give every point of view a fair crack, the programme represented 'Job Done'.

He may well think he negotiated the 60 minutes without conceding too many own goals or even, any major gaffe, but the vast majority of the viewers will have seen someone struggling desperately to answer the charges regarding vicious racism and Holocaust denial. He did get some good publicity for his odious views but it was not good publicity.

But I'm fully aware I might be wrong. Many viewers might have ignored the effective kebabbing of his arguments and merely received the thinly disguised racist messages with approval. The future will reveal how effective or ineffective has was, but I thought he was, in a word, rubbish.