Paul Kimmage was on Off the Ball this evening to speak about the Tour de France, and in particular Chris Froome.
The race leader has produced some astonishing performances during this year's Tour which has led to questions as to how the Kenyan-born rider is achieving such results.
While speaking about what he feels is a lack of transparency from Froome's team, Kimmage slammed The Times newspaper for being 'the official organ' of Team Sky.
This is my problem with Dave Brailsford [General manager of Team Sky].
I started off with him in his office in Manchester and he gave me four hours of his time and he couldn't do enough for me.
Two year later, I couldn't get five minutes with him and he wouldn't pick up the phone to me.
There's a reason for that in that I was asking questions that people from The Telegraph and The Times - which has turned into Pravda, to be honest - The Times is now the official organ of Team Sky.
I haven't read one piece from that newspaper that in any way, they just take the party line.
There was a piece in The Times on Saturday morning - 'Sky hope new doctor can turn tide of cynicism' - that the return of this guy Roger Palfreeman, who they paraded as the cornerstone of their anti-doping policy, this British doctor, when the team was founded in 2010.
Roger Palfreeman was rolled out to great fanfare, 'this is why you'll believe in us folks because we've got this great British doctor and we won't use any of those foreign guys who are up to no good. We've got our own guys and we're going to show you British is best.
Within six months Palfreeman was gone. I asked Brailsford about this. He seemed puzzled as to why I'd be curious. I asked him a simple thing, 'can I have his number?' and he couldn't give me his number.
This is why I struggle with the transparency stuff. If you cannot do something as simple as that for a reporter then you deserve everything that you are getting.
The piece in Saturday's paper to which he refers was written by Matthew Syed. You can read that here (though it is behind a paywall).
Kimmage is a former employee of The Sunday Times, which is the sister paper of The Times.
You can listen to the interview with Kimmage below.
