Grant Shapps tried to own Charlie Stayt and went off the rails in spectacular style

There was a fabulous couple of minutes on BBC Breakfast today when transport secretary Grant Shapps tried to school Charlie Stayt only for it to magnificently blow up in his face.

The BBC Breakfast man, in a discussion about the rail strikes, told the cabinet minister how in the normal timetable there was only one direct train an hour between London and Manchester.

Shapps was having none of it, and insisted in particularly pompous style that Stayt had got it wrong and there were in fact four trains an hour between the two cities.

So Stayt – and his team – shared their research and it’s 140 seconds well spent.

Watch Charlie Stayt school Grant Shapps( Secretary of State for transport) on how many trains run from London to Manchester an hour.

"Today, you can get a 10:20, 11:20 or a 12:20 train… there's only one train an hour for the next 6 weeks according to Avanti"#BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/WvblCOmkTT

— Haggis_UK (@Haggis_UK) August 19, 2022

Hard to tell if Shapps was too stupid to realise his mistake, or just too stubborn to admit it. Maybe the double blink at the 2m 16s mark is when the penny finally drops.

Our favourite bit might be the sheer exasperation in Charlie Stayt’s voice at the beginning of all this.

Oh, and Shapps might like to remember how many BBC staff commute from London to Manchester to work at the corporation’s MediaCity UK base in Salford. They probably know what they’re talking about.

He mentions the "reduced timetable" twice at the beginning, then oh sorry I thought we were talking about the "general timetable" at the end. When your best morning breakfast show interview liar can't even keep a lie going in a 5 minute interview, you're in trouble…

— Tom Art (@tomart9) August 19, 2022