Randolph Churchill Berates TV Interviewer

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28530, 8 March 1958, Page 13

Randolph Churchill Berates TV Interviewer

NEW YORK, March 7. Randolph Churchill, the son of Sir Winston Churchill, attacked an interviewer on television last night, calling him a “rude . . ■ impertinent . . . mean and caddish.” Mr Churchill tiraded for more than 10 minutes on the programme “Nightbeat” against the interviewer. John Wingate, after Mr Wingate asked him if he thought the American press had treated his sister, Sarah Churchill, fairly in recent stories. Mr Churchill, who returns to London today after a lecture tour of the United States, said the programme “sent a hired hack to see me today and told me I was to be brought here to speak of world events.” He told Mr Wingate, who interviews celebrities every night, that the programme “trapped me here.”

He said the show was run by “dirty people who are selling soap to people who don’t want it.” The question that touched off the trouble came when Mr Wingate asked if Mr Churchill believed the American press had been fair to his sister on recent stories about her arrest for public drunkenness in California. Miss Churchill pleaded guilty to the charge.

Mr Churchill told Mr Wingate he was “merely a television interviewer” asking questions of a “journalist.” He said: “I would not ask you questions about your father—l don’t know if you have a father.” Marlene Sanders, co-producer of the show, said “there was no stopping him.” “We’ve never had such a dressing down,” she said.

Mr Wingate said that almost 400 telephone calls had been received by the station after the show. About one-third of them bad protested at the questions about Miss Churchill. Many

others had objected to Mr Churchill’s language and had suggested that he “go back to Engla Among other comments made by Mr Churchill during the pro gramme were these: — “I was warned . . . they said, ‘Don’t you trust them. They’ll spring' something dirty, mean caddish on you.' I’ve not been disappointed by what my friends Sa “ d . . Why the hell .should 1 let myself be bullied around and kicked around by you. No, I won’t allow it. Frankly not. I’m a citizen of a free country . . we’re not frightened of the press We’re not frightened of television. We’re grown up people. We do as we choose and we just don’t take it lying down.” “I'm not frightened of you. “Why the hell should I be? 1 mean, I’m leaving the country tomorrow, and I can get along very well without you, just as you can get along very well without me.” “I wonder if you appreciate the distinction between pertinent and impertinent?” Later in the programme. Mr Churchill accused Mr Wingate of “trying to make stinking fish out of your own business.” He attacked the “spirit of conformism” he said he found in the American people. “They’re frightened and bulldozed and even bullied, often by people like yourself . . . you allow yourselves to be bullied by the great corporations, by the television, to all being the same, eating the same food, wearing the same clothes, allowing your children all to be similarly maleducated. ’ Towards the end of the programme, Mr Churchill said: “I believe in free speech. I think everybody should say what they think. And then other people are entitled to think what they like of the person who: said it”