“Will you stop this bourgeois priggishness!”

That about sums up Conrad Black’s interview with BBC’s Jeremy Paxman for Newsnight. The video, posted yesterday, is a classic display of Black’s supreme eloquence and undying insistence of his innocence to the criminal fraud charges he was convicted of in 2007. Black claims his conviction was a smear by a corrupt US justice system and, more importantly, Lord Black gets all fired up and unleashes his fury in a barrage of brilliant rhetoric.

“Why were you convicted?” asks Paxman. Black responds, indignant, “Because 99.5% of prosecutions in the US are convicted. The whole system is fraudulent, fascistic conveyor belt of their corrupt prison system.”

Black said he was proud of how he handled his trial and imprisonment.

“Let me tell you something. I am proud of having gone through the terribly difficult process of being falsely charged, falsely convicted, and ultimately almost completely vindicated, without losing my mind, becoming irrational, ceasing to be a penitent and reasonable person, and actually being able to endure a discussion like this without getting up and smashing your face in which is what most people would do if they had been through what I have been.”

Adding, ever so mischievously, “I don’t believe in violence.”

When Paxman asks whether Black expects to keep his seat in the House of Lords despite being a convicted criminal, he responds, “Why not?” Lord Black points out that there is no prohibition on convicted criminals sitting in the House and, that by Paxman’s theory that someone convicted of a crime should be barred from framing a country’s laws, Nelson Mandela would not be permitted to serve.

While he may now longer control a media empire, Lord Black certainly makes for some entertaining television.

See the whole interview here.

____

Michael Kolberg is The Sprawl Editor at Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter for jokes @mikeykolberg

For more, follow us on Twitter at @torontostandard and subscribe to our Newsletter.