My TV colleagues? A bunch of failed actors, blasts Paxo
JEREMY PAXMAN has launched a scathing attack on his fellow TV presenters, branding them a bunch of ‘failed actors’.
The former Newsnight host is particularly critical of Nicholas Witchell, the BBC’s Royal Correspondent, who he describes as a ‘buttoned-up presenter who had written a book about the Loch Ness Monster’.
Paxman, 66, poured scorn on Witchell in an interview to promote his autobiography, A Life In Questions, which is published next month. After describing newsreaders – Channel 4’s Jon Snow aside – as ‘failed actors’, the star recalled how one producer said cuttingly of one excitable newsreader: ‘Stick a fresh battery in the news bunny.’
Asked if that comment was a reference to BBC News anchor Huw Edwards, Paxman replied icily: ‘I have no comment to make.’
The father of three also has little time for former fellow Newsnight presenter Jeremy Vine, who he once described on air as a ‘Mini Me’ or ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’. Reminded he had once used the disparaging remarks, he said: ‘Did I? Good.’ Paxman said he did not miss his days at the helm of the flagship current affairs programme and admitted he hadn’t been very impressed by the great and the good who had frequently crossed his path.
He has also spoken for the first time about his battle with depression. In a foreword to the book, he reveals how he was once dependent on antidepressants, and friends tell how, as a student, he stood on a bridge and said: ‘It is completely and utterly meaningless, isn’t it?’ Paxman told The Times: ‘I don’t see any reasons to be ashamed of saying I’ve suffered depression. I didn’t exactly have a breakdown but it was pretty like one.’
In his 30s, the star suffered from insomnia and nightmares as he juggled his career as a war reporter with the loss of three friends.
He said he had been reluctant to talk about the condition in the past because he didn’t want to appear as a victim, but years of therapy had since taught him that it was important to get a proper perspective on matters.
‘The great thing is that unless we are all finished the sun’s going to come up tomorrow,’ he added.
‘It’s always worst in the middle of the night, and what seems insurmountable at 3am, at 8am looks completely different.
‘The critical thing they teach you doing CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy] is there is another way of looking at things.’
The presenter also admitted hating his father Keith, who once introduced his son to golf club friends as ‘one of those homosexual commu- nists from the BBC’. But in the book he talks movingly about the death of his mother.
On a lighter note, Paxman recalls The Mail on Sunday’s revelations from 2008 that he emailed Sir Stuart Rose, the then boss of Marks & Spencer, to raise concerns about the quality of the firm’s underwear.
He writes: ‘I was getting dressed in the gym one morning when, as I put my leg through my Marks & Spencer Y-fronts, the elastic came away from the cotton.
‘I emailed Stuart Rose that afternoon to warn him of what might be a looming crisis. He replied immediately, saying, “Come to lunch. Not just any lunch, an M&S lunch. Bring your pants.”’
The entertaining account duly appeared in the MoS and Paxman’s complaint ‘went global’.