Sri Lanka, March 17 -- Attempts at glib talk didn't work for the former Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe when he was interviewed by Mehdi Hasan the enfant terrible of Al Jazeera. It seemed that Hasan's guest had basically said goodbye to facts and arguments and was relying on trying to be clever, with retorts such as 'you are going off your head,' and 'you have now got cornered.'

None of it put Mehdi Hasan, Ranil Wickremesinghe's interlocutor off his stride. Rarely, it seemed, in the annals of recent media has an interview subject been so comprehensively taken down by the host.

Later, the former President tried some damage control by way of a press conference to explain away the bashing he received at the hands of Hasan. That d...