Iain Dale has confessed that ex-Sky News presenter Kay Burley is one of the figures named in his new book with whom he had “beef”, along with Isabel Oakeshott. The LBC star, 64, sat down with Daily Express’s JJ Anisiobi for the latest instalment of the Expresso podcast to discuss his new book Have I Said Too Much?.
Dale explained on the podcast: “I’ve tried to be as honest as I can without offending too many people. There only about two or three people I’ve had a go at. Isabel Oakeshott and Kay Burley being two of them. The original title for the book was A Dish Served Cold, but everyone said I couldn’t possibly use that because they said it’ll make people think you’re horrible. It isn’t that kind of book.”
When prodded about who he does name, he admitted: “Isabel Oakeshott and Kay Burley.
“Isabel Oakeshott tried to ruin my relationship with Lord Ashcroft, by saying to him that I called him a word which I don’t generally use, although I did use it in the studio about someone before we started! She failed. It wasn’t the first time that I’d found her to be duplicitous, so I thought, I’ve got to put that in.”
He added: “Kay Burley, I think, in some ways is a very talented broadcaster. But I’ve had two or three run-ins with her – once when I was live broadcasting from an election debate. She was obsessed with Periscope, then, do you remember that? A bit of a fad about filming?
“So she was walking around where all the broadcasters were and I was live on the radio doing my then Drivetime programme. She sticks this camera in my face while I’m talking about… I don’t know what I was talking about.
“And she goes, ‘Iain, why weren’t you at the Sky News debate last week?’ I mean, what? And so I just said, ‘That’s above my pay grade, go and ask my boss. Sod off’.”
He branded Burley “classless” (Image: Getty)
That wasn’t all, as Dale went on: “Another time – this was partly my fault because there was a terror attack going on – all the news channels were rolling on it to the exclusion of everything else, but Sky News weren’t.
“My producer said in my ear, ‘I bet they would if it was a Muslim’. So of course I stupidly then come back after the news and say that on air. John Ryley, the head of Sky News, went ballistic and texted my boss, ‘This is outrageous, he’s got to apologise’. That’s the only time I have actually had to apologise on air, and I had to do a tweet as well.
“And then the next day, [Kay] was presenting on Sky and I was presenting on LBC and I had two television screens in front of me, Sky and the BBC, and I see my tweet on her gigantic screen.
“Of course I couldn’t hear what she was saying because I couldn’t have the sound on. I thought, ‘What a classless thing to do’.”
