IT has not been a good couple of weeks for those who like their BBC presenters arrogant, with a good dash of sneer.

Hot on the heels of news that John Humphrys is to step down from Radio 4’s Today programme after 32 years, we hear Andrew Neil is leaving BBC 1’s late-night political show This Week after 16 years, with the broadcaster saying it will axe it completely once the current run ends in July. Good riddance. 

To say This Week is past its sell-by date is an understatement. Launched in 2002, it seemed fresh and quirky back then to have heavyweight Neil cosy up with a coterie of pals after dark to chat about political developments. Over the years, Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott, party rivals who had known each other since school, became the Richard and Judy of the show, giggling away with cheeky chappy Neil about the issues of the day under New Labour. It was all very self-congratulatory, a bit like the times themselves. 

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Sixteen years later, it’s not only the governing party that has changed. Over the years, as the issues being became more downbeat – the 2008 financial crisis, austerity and now the Brexit crisis – the format looked ill-equipped to deal with the big questions. Most cringeworthy of all, however, was Paisley-born Neil himself.

Don’t get me wrong, the aggressive, belligerent interviewing style he is known for had its place, certainly back in the alpha-male 1980s and 1990s when he was king of the jungle (and editor of the Sunday Times). But, as is the case with Humphrys, the increasingly arrogant behaviour on air and in public debate reveals a comically self-important figure who makes Alan Partridge look in touch with the times.

Take his embarrassingly pompous monologue about the greatness of Winston Churchill on last week’s show, following weeks of hysterical and pointless national debate about whether the wartime PM should be judged hero or villain. Casting himself as a cross between Margaret Thatcher and a 1950s grammar school headmaster, Neil imperiously instructed us with a severe wag of the finger that Churchill was indeed the most heroic Briton that ever lived. Talk about condescending. And also plain bizarre.

Why any BBC journalist would be allowed to showboat like this on live television is quite beyond me. But it just goes to show how unwieldy Neil has become. A couple of weeks earlier he had an equally cringeworthy on-air spat with left-wing columnist Owen Jones, who took him to task over his affiliations with the right-wing press. Surprise, surprise Neil did not take kindly to being put on the spot. 

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As to why he thought it was acceptable to take to Twitter and call respected Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, whose excellent work helped expose the Cambridge Analytica scandal a “mad cat woman”, one can only surmise - rightly, it would seem - that he believes he should be held to different standards than other BBC journalists. He has refused to properly apologise for this blatant misogyny. 

Did this catalogue of awful behaviour have anything to do with him leaving This Week? Who knows. The BBC’s director of news, Fran Unsworth, says she is looking to “develop future projects” with Neil. Well, we’ll see. 

As for Humphrys, I don’t doubt that some will miss his Daily Mail-style sneering and harrumphing on Today at any societal development that wasn’t around in his day, his astonishing insensitivity when discussing sexual crimes and the unequal pay of his own female colleagues, his terrible condescension when interviewing young people (especially young women) and ethnic minorities, but I certainly won’t. The way in which he has approached Brexit, meanwhile – suggesting truculently to the Irish foreign minister recently that Ireland should leave the EU and “throw in their lot” with the UK was a particular low point – has led many people, me included, to switch off. 

I’m not saying for a minute BBC journalists shouldn’t be robust in their questioning, and there are plenty, both male and female – Kirsty Wark, Gary Robertson, Emily Maitlis and Nick Robinson spring to mind – who can incisively demolish the arguments of those in power.

But punching down and wearing prejudices on your sleeve is not only editorially questionable, leaving the Beeb open to accusations of bias, but also astonishingly arrogant. 

And here we come to the crux of the matter: Neil and Humphrys have had their day. They have worn their arrogance and male privilege as a badge of honour for too long, lacking the humility or self-awareness to examine their own behaviour. Put them out to pasture (let’s face it, they won’t be short of a bob or two) so they can moan away till their hearts content, perhaps even to each other, about how hard done by they are, how it wasn’t like this in the old days.

As research highlights, the BBC is losing younger viewers and listeners in their droves. Andrew Neil and John Humphrys are part of the problem - and the Beeb is better off without them.