Jeremy Paxman

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Jeremy Paxman
Jeremy Paxman, photographed on 1 December 2007.
Born	Jeremy Dixon Paxman 11 May 1950 (1950-05-11) Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Education	M.A. ( St Catharine's College, Cambridge)
Occupation	Journalist, news and TV presenter and author.
Employers	BBC
Salary	Apparently £1,040,000 (2006)
Known for	Presenter of Newsnight and University Challenge
Partner	Elizabeth Ann Clough
Children	3

Jeremy Paxman (born 11 May 1950) is an English BBC journalist, news and TV presenter and author. He is best known for his abrasive and forthright style of interviewing on the BBC's Newsnight programme, which has often been praised as tough and incisive or criticised as aggressive, condescending and irreverent. Tough questioning is often described as "Paxmanesque" in the UK, in recognition of his style.

Early life

Jeremy Dixon Paxman was born on 11 May 1950 in Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. His father, Keith Paxman, served on the North Atlantic Fleet. His mother, Joan, born 1920, was a housewife. Paxman is the eldest of four children and has two brothers (one of whom, Giles Paxman, is the British Ambassador to Mexico) and one sister (Jenny Lawrence, who also works at the BBC).

He was brought up in Yorkshire and Worcestershire where he attended Malvern College, before moving on to Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey. He then read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the student newspaper Varsity and graduated with a Master of Arts (M.A.).

He was the subject of an episode of the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, first broadcast in January 2006. The program reported that Paxman is descended from Roger Packsman, a 14th-century politician from Suffolk, East Anglia, who changed his name to Paxman ("man of peace") to impress the electorate.

Career

Journalist

Paxman's career began on local radio before he moved to Belfast as an investigative journalist. In 1977 Paxman moved to London to join the BBC, and two years later he transferred to Panorama from the Tonight programme. After five years on that programme, working from locations as diverse as Beirut, Uganda and Central America, he accepted a job presenting the Six O'Clock News, where he was presenter for two years, before moving to the Breakfast Time programme.

In 1989 Paxman moved to his current job as presenter of Newsnight. One of the most famous Newsnight interviews took place on 13 May 1997, with Michael Howard, who had until 13 days earlier been Home Secretary. Howard was questioned regarding a meeting he had convened with the head of the Prison Service, Derek Lewis, regarding the potential dismissal of the head of Parkhurst Prison. During one continuous sequence Paxman put the same question — "Did you threaten to overrule him?" — twelve times to Howard, who on each occasion gave a qualified or evasive answer. In a 20th anniversary edition of Newsnight, Paxman revealed to Howard that he was attempting to prolong the interview as the next item was not ready. Paxman won the Royal Television Society award in 1998 for his interviewing style. In 2004 Paxman broached the subject with Howard — then Conservative leader — again; Howard laughed the question off, but did say he "didn't" threaten to overrule the Head of the Prison Service.

In 1998 Denis Halliday, one of the United Nations' humanitarian aid directors, resigned from his post in Iraq in protest at the UN sanctions imposed on that country, calling it "genocide". In the subsequent interview with Newsnight, Paxman asked Halliday, "Aren't you just an apologist for Saddam Hussein?"

In recognition of Paxman's tough reputation, when in 2003 Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to make the case for the Iraq war directly to the public, he chose Paxman as the presenter of a special TV question-and-answer session with a public studio audience. During this interview Paxman famously asked Blair if he and President Bush "prayed together" to which Blair replied "No, Jeremy... we don't pray together".

Paxman attracted attention to his robust interviewing of party political leaders during the 2005 General Election. The BBC received complaints from some viewers that in the interviews Paxman was "rude and aggressive". Paxman's role interviewing candidates on election night drew some attention, particularly after a 5am interview with winning candidate George Galloway. He repeatedly asked Galloway, "Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament [ Oona King]?", a line of questioning criticised by many, including Oona King herself. Galloway ended the interview after Paxman refused to stop until he had an answer. Paxman later challenged Galloway to return to Newsnight for a follow-up interview 'with or without your leotard', via a taped message on the Big Brother reality TV show, in which Galloway was a contestant. Galloway (who had worn a leotard on the show) considered it to be part of the Big Brother experience, not a professional offer.

Paxman's brusque manner is not restricted to his political interviews. When Newsnight decided to broadcast brief weather forecasts instead of financial reports, he openly ridiculed the decision on the air (saying, for example, "And for tonight's weather — it's April, what do you expect?"). In 2006, he was voted the fourth scariest celebrity on television in a Radio Times poll of 3,000 people.

BBC America has recruited Paxman to start working on their main channel broadcast in the US in autumn 2007. He is to introduce a synopsis of Newsnight items with an international aspect and is expected to bring his brash interviewing style to bear on US politicians.

Other television work

Whilst maintaining his spot fronting Newsnight, Paxman's career has diversified into the presentation of a number of TV programmes, such as the quiz programme University Challenge and You Decide. Paxman has presented University Challenge since 1994, bringing to the job his trademark sardonic manner. He is the longest-serving current quizmaster on British TV.

In April 2006 it was claimed by The Sun newspaper that he earned £800,000 for his Newsnight presenting and £240,000 for presenting University Challenge, making his putative total yearly salary £1,040,000. This revelation was one of a series of BBC salary leaks reported in the British tabloid press that sparked an investigation by the BBC.

Views on the BBC

During the period when John Birt was Director General of the BBC, the media regularly reported Paxman's criticism of Birt. In his turn, Birt was publicly critical of the confrontational approach taken by some interviewers, which was seen as a coded criticism of the approach taken by Paxman and his BBC colleague John Humphrys.

On 24 August 2007, Paxman delivered the McTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in which he was critical of the contemporary television medium. He expressed concern that, as a consequence of recent scandals, it was losing the trust of the public, which already mistrusted politicians. He also commented on Tony Blair's opinions regarding the media which Blair made at the time he left office. Paxman acknowledged that the media is often oppositional, but considered that it benefits democracy in being so, and that the Reithian objectives to "inform, educate and entertain" remain valid. In conclusion, Paxman called on the television industry to rediscover a sense of purpose. He also dismissed the attribution of a quote to himself ("Why is this lying bastard lying to me?") as being inaccurate.

Author

Paxman is also an author of non-fiction books. His first book arose out of a Panorama programme that he worked on with Robert Harris on biological and chemical warfare. Together they wrote A Higher Form of Killing (1982) exploring its history; a revised edition published in 2002 included a chapter asserting that Iraq possessed both chemical and biological weapons. Working on his own, Paxman wrote Through the Volcanoes: A Central American Journey (1985), about events he witnessed in Central America. He also wrote Friends in High Places: Who Runs Britain? (1991) which investigated the labyrinthine connections between those in power in early-1990s Britain. A study of the English nation entitled The English: A Portrait of a People followed in 1999 to considerable critical acclaim. The Political Animal: An Anatomy (2003), discusses the character traits of those that enter politics. His most recent book is On Royalty (2006), which is a thesis on, and defence of, the UK's constitutional monarchy.

In popular culture

• A puppet of Paxman made regular appearances on the satirical TV show Spitting Image (1984–1996). He was portrayed as extremely smug and deeply in love with himself.

• Paxman became a focus of media attention in his own right in October 2000 when the stolen Enigma machine which had been taken from Bletchley Park Museum was inexplicably sent to him in the post. He had it returned to its rightful location.

• Paxman had a cameo role as himself in the 2004 film Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. He has made similar appearances in British TV shows such as The Vicar of Dibley (2000), Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years (2001; uncredited) and My Dad's the Prime Minister (2004).

• The grinning green cartoon planet devised by American marketing executives for the cover of US editions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) was nicknamed "Jeremy Pacman" by fans. The book's author Douglas Adams hated this character, although it seems unlikely he was aware of its nickname.

• As part of the promotional tour for his book On Royalty (2006), Paxman appeared on the US-based Comedy Central faux news program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 14 May 2007. His appearance was made more relevant since it took place on the heels of Queen Elizabeth II's state visit to the United States the week before.

• Paxman is often nicknamed " Paxo", which is both a contraction of his surname and a popular brand of British stuffing mix.

• Charlie Brooker once opined in his Screen Burn columns that one of his new policies for the BBC were he put in charge would be to "let Paxman actually hit people", describing this as "self-explanatory".

Tributes and honours

Paxman was awarded the Richard Dimbleby Award for Outstanding Presenter in the Factual Arena, the most prestigious current affairs honour of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), in 1996. Two years later, in 1998, he won the Royal Television Society's Interviewer of the Year Award for his Newsnight interview of Michael Howard, as well as the Broadcasting Press Guild's award for Best Performer (Non-Acting). He received another BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award in 2000, and was nominated for the award in 2001 and 2002.

Paxman was made an honorary graduate of the University of Bradford in December 1999 in recognition of his work as a TV journalist. On 15 September 2006 at the Barbican Centre in London, he received an honorary doctorate from the Open University. Among the invited guests at the ceremony were three members of the Open University team from University Challenge 1999.

Paxman is a Fellow by Special Election of St. Edmund Hall in the University of Oxford, and an Honorary Fellow of his alma mater, St. Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Personal life

Paxman lives with his partner Elizabeth Ann Clough in Stonor, Oxfordshire. They have three children: Jessica, and twins Victoria and Jack.

He supports Leeds United, and enjoys fly fishing in his leisure time.

Works

• Harris, Robert; Jeremy Paxman (1982). A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare. New York, N.Y.: Hill and Wang. ISBN 080905471X.  New edition published as Harris, Robert; Jeremy Paxman (2002). A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Gas and Germ Warfare. London: Arrow. ISBN 0-09-944159-4. .
• Paxman, Jeremy (1985). Through the Volcanoes: A Central American Journey. London: Paladin. ISBN 0-586-08572-6. 
• Paxman, Jeremy (1991). Friends in High Places: Who Runs Britain?. London; New York, N.Y.: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-015600-3. 
• Paxman, Jeremy (1999). The English: A Portrait of a People. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-026723-9. 
• Paxman, Jeremy (2003). The Political Animal: An Anatomy. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-028847-3. 
• Paxman, Jeremy (2006). On Royalty. London; New York, N.Y.: Viking. ISBN 0-670-91662-5.