Lord Lebedev, the proprietor of The Evening Standard, has been using the paper to wage his own ‘major inquiry’ into free speech. ‘I’ve donned my body armour and I am ready,’ he wrote in an article launching the campaign.
One of Lebedev’s free-speech interviewees was Azealia Banks, the ranty singer. According to Lord Leb, Banks occupies ‘an increasingly rarefied place in the pop pantheon: that of a woman who says it like it is.’
She certainly made good on that claim. In a post-interview social media tirade she called Lebedev by turns ‘a homosexual,’ ‘a Gay Party Boy,’ ‘Evegghead cornball’ and a ‘wannabe James Bond but really serving nothing more than Austin Powers.’
In this interests of cutting to the chase, I asked Lebedev – a man who Private Eye routinely refers to as ‘two beards’ – whether there is any substance to her claims. ’OMG AZEALIA YOU BLEW MY F**ING COVER!!!’ he replies.
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