Paxman splits from his love of 35 years
WHEN Jeremy Paxman stepped down from Newsnight after a quarter of a century, his long-term partner, Elizabeth Clough, might have hoped to see more of the BBC’s celebrated inquisitor.
Sadly, spending more time at their family home in Oxfordshire seems to have spelt doom for their 35-year relationship. I can disclose that the 66-year-old University Challenge host has split up with Elizabeth, 64, with whom he has three grown-up children.
Friends say he is being comforted by a much younger woman at his pied-a-terre in Kensington, London. The new companion is said to be in her 30s and works in publishing.
‘Jeremy Paxman and his partner separated last year,’ confirms his agent. ‘They retain a mutual respect for each other and a deep love for their children.’
The couple have a 26-year-old daughter, Jessica, and twins Jack and Victoria, 19.
The break-up is a bitter blow for Elizabeth, who never received a wedding ring from Paxman despite making great sacrifices for the relationship.
She gave up her highly paid job as a producer on the BBC’s faith and ethics programme The Big Questions in 2011 after the Corporation moved it from London to Glasgow.
At the time, Steve Anderson, creative director of Mentorn, which produces The Big Questions, said: ‘When it was relocated by the BBC to Scotland, she spent some time bedding it in, but she couldn’t relocate.’ Paxman is known for his appeal to the fairer sex and was nicknamed the ‘thinking woman’s crumpet’.
In 2003, he was spotted kissing actress Sinead Cusack, wife of Oscarwinner Jeremy Irons, on the lips in a London street, but they said they were just friends.
Known as a willowy beauty, Elizabeth Clough was one of 25 girls who made history in 1968 by ending the all-male tradition of the English public school.
She joined 800 boys at Marlborough College — which now costs £35,280 per year — setting a path that would be followed by the Duchess of Cambridge and Samantha Cameron, among many other prominent women.
‘I had the pick of all the debating societies, read out my poems in literary groups and was generally lionised by virtue of my sex,’ she later recalled.
‘I went out with the head boy, Nigel, who was very charming. His position gave him certain privileges. That was the only romance I had, because after Nigel, all the boys my age seemed totally callow and unsophisticated.’
She then went up to Oxford to read history at Somerville College. Malvern College-educated Paxman was at Cambridge.
‘After Marlborough, Oxford was a huge disappointment,’ she said. ‘The men weren’t the gods I was expecting, they were no more mature than the boys I’d been at school with.’
After graduating, Elizabeth joined the BBC as a trainee. She later worked on Panorama, Watchdog and Newsnight, where she met Paxman.
He went on to become one of the BBC’s highest-paid presenters, signing a four-year deal with the broadcaster in 2010, worth £3.2 million. However, he announced in 2014 that he was to leave Newsnight.
Paxman had told BBC DirectorGeneral Tony Hall that he wished to quit the previous year, but agreed to stay on after the show was damaged by the Jimmy Savile scandal and the Lord McAlpine fiasco.
Speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival in 2014, Paxman complained that Newsnight was made by idealistic ‘13-year-olds’ who foolishly thought they could ‘change the world’.