Jeremy Paxman

Jeremy Paxman (born 11 May 1950) is a BBC journalist, news presenter and author. He is most famous for his abrasive and forthright style of interviewing on the BBC's Newsnight programme.

Paxman was educated at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the student newspaper Varsity. His career began on local radio before he moved to Belfast as an investigative journalist. In 1977 Paxman moved to London to work on the BBC television programme Tonight. Two years later he transferred to Panorama. After seven years on that programme, working from locations as diverse as Beirut, Uganda and Central America, he accepted a job presenting the Six O'Clock News. In 1989 he moved to his current job as presenter of Newsnight. Whilst maintaining his spot fronting that show, his career has diversified into the presentation of a number of television programmes, such as the quiz programme University Challenge and You Decide.

On one famous Newsnight occasion (in 1997), in an attempt to extract a truthful answer, he put the same question ("Did you threaten to overrule him?") fourteen times to the then Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard, relating to the sacking of the Head of the Prison Service following a well-publicised jail-break. Howard evaded the question each time ("I did not overrule him") and never gave a straight answer. This was later revealed to be a stalling strategy by Paxman on being told that the studio was having technical trouble with one of the articles later on in the programme.

Paxman is a well-known public figure, nicknamed "Paxo", which is both a contraction of his surname and the name of a popular British stuffing mix. Any kind of tough questioning is routinely described as Paxmanesque in recognition of his style.

Paxman became a focus of media attention in his own right in October 2000 when the stolen Enigma machine which had been taken from Bletchley Park Museum was inexplicably sent to him in the mail. He had it returned to its rightful location.

He is also an author of non-fiction books. His first book arose out of a Panorama programme that he worked on with Robert Harris on biological and chemical warfare. Together they wrote A Higher Form of Killing exploring their history. Working on his own he wrote Friends in High Places: Who Runs Britain? (1991) which investigated the labyrithine connections between those in power in early 1990s Britain. A study of the English nation entitled The English: A Portrait of a People followed in 1998 to considerable critical acclaim. His most recent work is The Political Animal which discusses the character traits of those that enter into politics.

Paxman has presented the BBC quiz programme University Challenge since 1994.

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