Nice work, Sunday Politics. You stuck a grizzly bear in your interview chair and jabbed him with a poker. The bear roared and thrashed about, and your host called him an idiot. Congratulations, have a Pulitzer.

On Sunday, the Sunday Politics became Beadle's About, when they invited fiery Texan shock-jock, Alex Jones, and sat him next to David Aaronovitch, to discuss the Bilderberg conference. Jones is a known quantity to the mainstream, after his famous tirade at Piers Morgan. Everyone on the production knew precisely what was going to happen, the bellowing shambles was always the goal. It was the TV equivalent of shaking Diet Coke and Mentos.

Before the production got through to Jones, I'd been booked to take part in the discussion with Aaronovitch. I was looking forward to it, as the argument for taking Bilderberg seriously as an international policy summit is easy to make. I knew Aaronovitch would try and drag the event into the world of conspiracy, and I was ready to defend the journalists and politicians who this year were paying proper attention to an influential and unaccountable lobbying forum.

But the Sunday Politics didn't want a discussion. They wanted chaos, so they booked a volcano. Barely for a second did the programme stray into a critique of the event itself. The whole sequence, from start to finish, was deliberately shaped to discredit any serious discussion of a conference which takes itself seriously enough to spend millions of pounds on security. Which is serious enough to hold the attention, for three days, of George Osborne, Kenneth Clarke, the Dutch prime minister, the head of the IMF, the heads of Google, Shell, BP and HSBC. And dozens of other senior policymakers and corporate CEOs. But for Andrew Neil's crazy gang, it was all a giant hoot.

"It's like Christmas for conspiracy theorists," grinned Neil, introducing a short video package about this year's conference. No mention made of all the mainstream press that turned up (Reuters, AP, the Times, Telegraph, Channel 4 News, BBC London News, Sky News, Daily Mail, many others) – or the fact that the report itself was shot in a press area, a first for the conference. It was just a chance to giggle at the crazies.

"This protest seems more like a slightly weird party," said reporter Adam Fleming, as his camera picked out a ventriloquist doll and a protester dressed as a clown. Kenneth Clarke turned up, plump with chuckles, to reassure a giddy Fleming that there's nothing to worry about, and not to listen to the all the "nutty theories" about Bilderberg.

Fleming didn't ask Clarke about allegedly breaching the ministerial code by attending last year's conference, or about his involvement with the Bilderberg Association charity (brought up by Michael Meacher on Sky News). He just stood there simpering while Clarke told him how "dull" the whole thing is. "I'm actually slightly disappointed," Fleming giggled. Yeah, you and me both.

From giggly start to screaming finish, it was a cheap, circus hatchet job on the story. Never, not for an instant, was there going to be a debate. They could have had one, but they wanted a hand grenade. Aaronovitch didn't even need to pull the pin. It pulled itself. Jones barely needed a nudge to explode.

Before the show I told the producers what would happen. "This isn't journalism," I said, "this is sport." If anything, it was an attack on journalism. Certainly an attack on measured thinking. I texted the producer after the show. "Job done."

Charlie Skelton, a comedy writer and journalist, reported on the 2013 Bilderberg conference for the Guardian