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We have a masochistic relationship with our politicians in this country.
On the one hand we want them to sort everything out, but on the other we realise they’re responsible for the state the country is in, so don’t seem to like many of them.
Even the most popular politicians are barely in positive numbers when we ask people if they like them.
We desperately want to hold them to account, and Jeremy Paxman was one man who could do that.
On Newsnight he would mercilessly grill guests as they tried to avoid, deflect and prevaricate from their failures.
They could try to talk their way out of it but Jeremy stayed locked on to them, much in the same way a police Alsatian dog would lock on to the arm of a criminal trying to flee after being caught trying burgle a house.
He’s left Newsnight now, of course, so Jeremy is doing other things, such as documentaries and books.
A podcast is next. Jeremy has decided there must be more to life than cudgelling politicians and students on TV and is now interviewing the great and the good in a more relaxed setting than a BBC studio.
The Lock In is, as he puts it: “An excuse for me to talk to people I want to hear from, in a place I want to be... the pub”.
So it is that, free at last of any editorial oversight, Jeremy has been sitting down in some of London’s finest boozers to enjoy drinks and conversation with an eclectic bunch of guests.
The excellent line up so far includes Jack Reacher author Lee Child, globetrotting Python Michael Palin, angry scientist Richard Dawkin, and less angry scientist Brian Cox.
The chats are quite probing, but not quite, luckily for Jeremy’s guests, as vicious.