Paxman, his lover and the awkward questions he will face about her
Host leaves mother of his children for younger woman – echoing his father
HE has described her as the perfect researcher, ‘bright, resourceful, cheerful and indefatigable’.
And as the new partner of Jeremy Paxman, she will doubtless need all those qualities, and more.
Today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Mr Paxman, the famously grumpy inquisitor-inchief, has left his partner of 34 years and is now living instead with a Canadian-born books editor nearly 30 years his junior.
Jillian Taylor, 37, a divorcee, has worked alongside the author and presenter on two of his best sellers – and earned effusive praise from the author in the process.
For the past three decades Mr Paxman has been the partner of Elizabeth Clough, mother of his three children and a talented TV producer in her own right.
It is thought they parted in November, although the news was only confirmed on Friday in a brief statement from his agent, saying: ‘Jeremy Paxman and his partner separated last year. They retain a mutual respect for each other and a deep love for their children.’
However Elizabeth, 64, is said to be privately devastated by the collapse of the relationship.
The couple first met when both were working for the BBC.
Former BBC Newsnight host Mr Paxman is no stranger to family breakdown, having endured a fractured upbringing as a child.
Indeed in leaving his partner at the age of 66, he is following in the footsteps of his own father, Keith, who abandoned Mr Paxman’s mother and his four children when he was in his 50s to find a new life, and eventually new romance, in New Zealand and Australia.
Mr Paxman’s relationship with a frequently absent father forms a central part of last year’s autobiography, A Life In Questions – unlike Miss Clough who, as was noted at the time, is largely absent from its pages.
It is believed that Miss Taylor now shares Mr Paxman’s £1.5m London apartment. Last night, he was not taking questions. It was of course posing them, and the manner in which he did so, that made him famous.
For more than two decades, between 1989 and 2014, he was one of the most prominent and best paid figures on BBC television, known for his acerbic, often aggressive interviews with politicians and, on occasion, for his histrionic face-pulling at the answers he received.
He is also the author of numerous books of popular history including Friends In High Places and The Political Animal.
It was working on these that he found himself alongside Miss Taylor.
Their professional relationship stretches back at least seven years to 2010, when she helped him write the book Empire: What Ruling The World Did To The British.
Employed as a researcher and editorial assistant at publisher Penguin, Miss Taylor is described in the acknowledgements as ‘conscientious, imaginative and astonishingly industrious’.
The pair were photographed together in London in 2011, around the time Empire was published. The blonde woman also worked on Mr Paxman’s next historical book, Great Britain’s Great War, which came out in 2013.
Mr Paxman took a similarly glowing view of his researcher, this time writing even more effusively: ‘Most of all I thank Jillian Taylor, whose Stakhanovite capacity for research continues to amaze. I had no soon asked a question than she had answered it.
‘She is probably the perfect researcher – bright, resourceful, cheerful and indefatigable.’
In May 2015 it was announced that Miss Taylor was being promoted from her official role as an editorial assistant at Penguin to take up a position as an editor with one of the company’s offshoots, Michael Joseph, which specialises in women’s lifestyle books.
Last night a friend of Miss Taylor described Mr Paxman as ‘a lucky man’. They added: ‘Jillian is bright, bubbly and affectionate with a good sense of humour.’
It is not known whether the personal relationship with Miss Taylor began before Mr Paxman’s separation from his partner Miss Clough, but no doubt she and others will be asking questions.
The reasons of Miss Taylor’s divorce are also not known.
This is not the first time that Mr Paxman has been caught up in rumours of an affair.
In 1998, it was reported he had betrayed Miss Clough for several months with Joanna Cecil, a 36-year-old television executive.
At the time Mr Paxman refused to discuss the claims, although Joanna Cecil later said: ‘I did have a relationship with Jeremy.’
‘She is astonishingly industrious’