I don't believe that Brand really wants to be challenged seriously on his points, or if he's as smart as he thinks he is he shouldn't want to. He could be demolished quite quickly. Paxman is easy pickings these days -- he is lazy, complacent, visibly bored by his standing, and not intellectually agile or committed enough to interview properly. Most savvy and articulate politicians can confound or run around his bluff techniques by now as they are too common and not nearly acute enough. Even Bozza LOL LEGEND Johnson can rung rings around his carcass. This personal bankruptcy was clearly demonstrated by an abject performance on the Graham Norton show last week. Watching that painful wreck, it seemed quite obvious that the "serious" media establishment is too scared of not looking "cool" or "edgy" or "radical" to say anything more critical than, "Brand is wrong, but he made some good points." No, he didn't. He was talking bollocks. He had no good points to make about politics. His points, for what they were, barely amounted to points. They were slogans and platitudes. Considered without passion, they simply show that he isn't interested politics. Or, at least, he is only interested in politics on the level of aesthetics and utopias. But anyone hoping for a contemporary Soul of Man Under Socialism or News from Nowhere in his New Statesman essay was surely sorely dissappointed.
As it goes, I ussd to be blissfully indifferent to Brand, and considering that I loathe most British stand-up comics of his generation that is almost saying something positive. Then he started telling poor people not to vote, and I realised he was a cunt.
Edit: also, I reckon that if Brand was effectively challenged in this way then he would, himself, resort to the ad hominem faster than a ferret up Billy Mackenzie's leg.