 It's hard to imagine that GB News would have been able to launch earlier this year without Andrew Neil. He was the face of the channel. He fronted it. He was the chairperson, and it was the legitimacy he brought to the channel that made it possible for them to bring so many presenters, so many journalists on board. However, two weeks after the station began airing, Neil ran off to the south of France, exasperated at technical mishaps. He said at the time he would be back before the summer ends, well, it's September, and it looks like he's not comfortable coming back just yet. Multiple insiders expected Neil to be back on air on September 6, but the Times understands that this prospect is now out of the question. Neil, who also serves as GB News's chairman, has been in talks with management about his return without a resolution. GB News said last month that it was looking forward to welcoming back Neil in September, but the channel did not repeat this statement when approached for comment today. This all comes after Neil reportedly clashed with the channel's chief executive, Angelos Frengopoulos. Insiders said that Neil told Frengopoulos that the station had an overemphasis on political opinion over news, so he wanted it to be an alternative to the BBC and Sky. The director wanted this to be more of a Fox News style opinion channel. The Times also had this. It is understood that Neil regarded GB News's launch as shambolic after it was plagued by problems, including poorly lit set misspelled ions, misbehaving graphics, and repeated lost connections to remote guests. The GB News board is also said to have raised questions about GB News's performance. The channel has been averaging a daily audience of 20,000 in recent weeks compared with 34,000 in its first five weeks. At the same time, Sky News and BBC News have made audience gains. Do you think Andrew Neil is going to come back to GB News? And do you think this pulping has been a bit of a flop? A daily audience of 20,000 is really bad. We get more than that for episodes of Tiskey Sour, and we didn't have... I mean, how much money did they have in seed funding? It was like 60 million, wasn't it? That is not much to show for it. But then you get this kind of... They go, well, we've got more subscribers on YouTube than you do. Oh my gosh. 60 million. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? 60 million. If we had 60 million, we'd be bigger than Channel 4 in two years. Anyway, it's a huge amount of money, Michael. We'd certainly be bigger than LBC very quickly. I don't think he's coming back now. I think... And for two reasons. Firstly, this has been a huge failure as a political project for him and a professional project. Just because the standard of the production has not been particularly high, I think he was delusional that it would ever be better than it is. It's very, very hard to start any kind of new organization, let alone a media outlet. He has a nice life. I think he has a nice filler in the south of France. He's an older man. He has his work at the spectator. I'm sure he'll still get tragically enough for the rest of us gigs at the BBC. He'll be invited on for his two Bob's Worth on Good Morning Britain. So, do you really want to keep on embarrassing yourself in front of 20,000 people every day and kind of pissing all over any sort of professional legacy you had? I suspect you wouldn't. And I suspect that they're not going to want him back. Maybe a more hands-off kind of approach. Maybe he'll be more of a guest sometimes. I mean, that would still be pretty good for them and for him. But in terms of anchoring a show, no, I don't think so. There's a great tweet earlier on today. And somebody, I think this is entirely correct, by the way, they said, you know, people refer to Andrew Neal as this pugilist, this incredible forensic interviewer. Part of that was because he had this huge team of researchers. You and I went on, you know, BBC this week, for instance, Michael, we saw it. Huge number of people working for him because it's the BBC. Doing the hard yards, doing the research, getting the guests, et cetera, et cetera. And GB News doesn't have that because it's not the BBC. And I think he's kind of surprised that it's not the BBC. It's not the Sunday Times or it was previously with Rupert Murdoch in the 80s. So, I think he was kind of delusional about how well this could be as a media product. I think it's fallen short. I think he'll stop. And I think his life is sufficiently nice anyway that he kind of will just want to relax. I mean, I might be wrong, but wanting to go back to London in the freezing cold in the winter for 20,000 people watching a day when you could stare in the south of France, I mean, I know what I would do if I were him.