Embattled Tory chairman Grant Shapps has become such a liability that his party have pulled him from a high-profile media appearance. Shapps was billed to appear on BBC Three’s youth discussion programme Free Speech, which promised an “unscripted hour of tough and uncensored questions”.

The programme listing was updated this morning to show that Shapps has been replaced by junior minister Sam Gyimah. And while CCHQ claim they raised “diary problems” with the BBC on 13 March, this happened to be one day after Guardian hack Randeep Ramesh put allegations to Shapps that he had repeatedly lied about his second job as an internet marketer.

@paulwaugh Funny how Grant's diary problems started the day after @guardian put the allegations in this story to him http://t.co/MLLOWa49lg — Randeep Ramesh (@tianran) March 24, 2015

Ironically enough, the strapline for the edition was “I’m a Conservative, ask me anything”.