Jon Snow has graced our TV screens, delivering us news in a succinct and affable manner, since 1989. As presenter of the Channel 4 News, whose “target audience” consists largely of 18-24 years olds, Snow is known not only for his journalistic abilities but also for his immaculate dress-sense that sees him coordinating his ties and socks.

Both in conversation with me and in his talk at the Union, Snow was eager to talk about the differences in behavioural patterns between men and women. He shares his observation that “men are prepared to bullshit and women in a funny sort of way aren’t”. When ringing up women to interview for the show, Channel 4 is often turned down because the topic in discussion isn’t their main interest. However, when they ask men, they are consistently more willing, even if it isn’t their field of expertise. In the Q&A session, Snow sought questions from female members in the audience in order to maintain a gender balance. Similarly, Snow notes that when discussing Natalie Bennett's recent disastrous interview with LBC “what I thought was nice about that was that she was completely honest about it and said ‘I had a brain fade’ and if you listen to it, it sounds like the old brain has gone to sleep altogether. And a man would have denied it all and bumbled”.

Snow recalls his experience interviewing Thatcher “about 20 times and I think the score line was Thatcher 20, Snow nil”, and calls her "a completely impossible woman." He describes the unease he felt in the presence of the Iron Lady, who would employ her femininity to render men uncomfortable – something she was able to do because “we never really had to deal with a woman in power before, she got away with more than I think most women would”. He felt like he was “in the presence of matron and that conceivably she could see that you hadn’t washed behind your ears or you had dirty fingernails… She would also never let you forget that she was a woman. She used to wear those very odd new-fangled Lycra stockings before Lycra had really been sorted out… if you crossed and uncrossed your legs there was a certain ‘swish’ ‘swish’. It was rather rough and she would cross and uncross her legs extensively. She would be in the middle of quite a detailed conversation and suddenly there would be a ‘swish’ ‘swish’”. The Lycra wasn’t the only thing throwing Snow off, as she used to challenge him by shouting “what a perfectly stupid question”.

Interviewing Thatcher may have been a daunting prospect but what has been Snow's hardest challenge? Snow speaks fondly of “old Terry Pratchett”, whom he had the pleasure of interviewing before the author's death earlier this month. He found “reporting his death” very difficult because “death is not very manageable.” It is clear to me that Snow held Pratchett in high-esteem as he recounts one of his “wonderful statements”, that “you should only do something if somewhere you are provoking somebody who would like you not to do it”.

Pratchett’s comment seems to have had an effect on Snow, who is known for his unforgiving interrogative style: “I’m a bit of a rebel to be honest. Oddly enough on Channel 4, you can afford to be a rebel… they wouldn’t employ me on the BBC.” Why not? “BBC is a treasured national institution and therefore they have to be well-behaved. So when Jeremy Clarkson becomes seriously even more misbehaved than normal, when a swear word becomes a punch… then it becomes problematical for them”. His rebellious streak is evident in some of his more unconventional styles of reporting, something seen recently when he hosted Drugs Live on Channel 4 and smoked cannabis on air – an experience which he describes as “pretty traumatic” because he felt “out of control”. Despite joking that only 20 per cent of what you get on the street is “good old fashioned hash”, Snow is keen to convey the sinister side of the drug which severely affects communication between the emotive and motor elements of the brain.

Snow rejects accusations of a left-wing bias in the BBC, saying this criticism “comes from people who would really like to destroy the BBC anyway”. He does however think that the heavily-biased and ideological media in the US is harmful for both the population and American politics. Snow speaks disparagingly when he says that “America is very ill-served by its media and unfortunately one of the great tragedies is mass ignorance. [...] there is a population of people who have a very narrow and closed-down view of the world… When you think about it, half the Republican Congressmen don’t believe in evolution, half the Republican candidates don’t believe in climate change. They just don’t think it exists. It’s incredible. These are educated adult people, supposedly. Something like 70 per cent of Congress, Senate and the House don’t have a passport. They’ve never been anywhere. They’ve only ever been in America so all their prejudices and all their information is from within there. These TV channels like Fox News know exactly what their audience want to hear. They serve to entrench their pre-existing conceptions and do not offer any alternative opinion in a neutral manner. Thus the polarised politics in the US becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy."

One might assume that interviewing one of Britain’s most revered interviewers might be a daunting prospect. However, in discussion with Snow, I found myself charmed into relaxation. When I met him, he admitted that he found interviewing at first to be “a frightening thing” but says he grew in confidence; so much so that whilst interviewing he only ever has a few lines of notes outlining themes to discuss.