Nick Ferrari

So I found a way of ending the call and saying, I know you're very busy.

And I would hate to sort of, you know, eat up your time.

So I'll allow you to carry on with your day.

And that's how it ended.

I mean, I've had to sort of polish off slightly atrophied skills, reporting skills, because I've been a columnist for a while.

I mean, I was a reporter for 20 years.

And so these conversations, if there is something newsworthy in them,

I will write up as a news report for the Financial Times and make sure that it has no impact on what I write in my columns, which I try to make analytically as clear and as non euphemistic as I can.

And he did happen to.

Well, he asked me to send the links.

to text him the links so there is a bit a texting dimension to this i should i should mention um to my recent columns and then he sort of i won't say went ballistic particularly given you know that the conversation is about the middle east but he he was not happy let's put it that way with um and called back to say how wrong i was and that he was winning like never before etc

Essentially, yes.

I mean, he wasn't abusive in the way that he is to some journalists, usually in public.

I mean, I think he is more abusive in public in a performative way.

than he is in private.

I know some of the journalists, particularly female journalists, who he's exceptionally rude and demeaning about in public, when they talk to him on the phone, he's, you know, all charm and courtesy.

So he's never sort of spoken to me in the way that he's spoken, say, to Caitlin Collins of CNN, or indeed to Kirsten Welker of NBC News, who he walked out of

He actually stormed out of that interview on Sunday, a few hours before I'd spoken to him.

He strikes me as a prisoner of other people's decisions.

He has started the war, but he didn't know how he was going to finish it.