and lionel barber was editor of the financial times from 2005 to 2020. s now an investor in the new european. and lionel, just if we start with you, the last time you were on the media show, you had just been to interview vladimir putin. what chance today, do you think, that a journalist could get an audience with that president? extremely limited. under 1%. maybe in seven weeks if this is over, he they might do something, a staged event. but a one on one like the financial times did in 2019, very unlikely. and by the way, it did take five years to get there, to the kremlin for the post—midnight meeting. and when you did get there, what did you talk about? we talked about everything from the failed assassination of sergei skripal, which he dismissed, mr putin. as a story worth less than five kopeks. to the relations with china, the intervention in syria and notably two stories that came out. one was about when he declared under questioning the idea that liberalism, he said it was obsolete. he really felt the west was in decline, decadent, preoccupied by s