Channel 4 News at 25: Jon Snow

Last Modified: 31 Oct 2007
By: Jon Snow

A political scoop that cost Labour votes in 2005 and the day Alistair Campbell turned up uninvited. Jon Snow looks back.

My favourite moment was wrapped around the only serious political scoop I've ever had.

Jon Snow presents Channel 4 News on 27 April 2005

One dark night five men, three of whom I knew, descended on my house. Each gave me a brown envelope. Inside one of them was the Attorney General's top secret legal advice on the legality of going to war in Iraq.

I was so pleased with it I allowed myself to brandish it at the top of Channel 4 News.

It caused a mighty stir in the last 10 days of the 2005 election campaign. Jack Straw told me if it had come nearer the vote it would have cost labour 50 seats. He thinks it may anyway have cost them a dozen or more.
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- Read the background

Because it was, simply, one of the most unpredictable events I've ever been in on the Alistair Campbell interview in 2003 has to make the list.

He arrived unannounced to what was effectively his first TV interview.

I was unprepared and had no researcher to hand. And there was no one in the production gallery to shout advice down my ear because they'd all fled to call Fleet Street to tell them to watch!
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- Watch behind the scenes
- Read interview transcript