Father who abandoned him

JEREMY PAXMAN pulled no punches when describing the father who abandoned him.

In his autobiography, he told how his feelings about Keith Paxman ‘ranged from resentment to passionate hatred’.

He described the shadow cast by a violent Yorkshireman who beat him at the slightest provocation before, eventually, leaving his wife and four children to go and live in New Zealand. ‘Certainly, my childhood impression was of a man incapable of expressing affection,’ he said.

By 1979, Paxman’s bluff father had met a woman, Celia, with whom he would share the final 31 years of his life.

He died in 2010. But before that, Jeremy took himself out to confront the father who had only ever communicated by Christmas cards. He was met by a careworn man in an orange sarong, who gave him a fumbled hug.