Since Jeremy Paxman quit Newsnight last year, he has hardly been discreet with regards to his feelings about the BBC’s flagship current affairs show, claiming it is run by 12-year-olds.
Now, he tells this week’s Radio Times what programmes he has been enjoying of late, and surprise, surprise, Newsnight isn’t one of them.
‘I’m watching Take Me Out and listening to the World Service, where there’s still real news,’ he says.
Paxman’s penchant for ITV’s dating show aside, could he be alluding to the direction Newsnight has taken under Ian Katz? In an interview this summer, the Newsnight editor went so far as to admit Paxman found his ideas ‘infantile’.
‘He’s dyspeptic about pretty much everything. Ideas are flattened. Almost everything you suggest Jeremy will think is ‘preposterous’ or ‘infantile’ or an otherwise ‘completely lamentable’ idea, and that’s a challenge because you have to sell it to him,’ Katz said.
Since the former deputy editor of The Guardian joined Newsnight, the programme has seen Emily Maitlis hold an interview with the Cookie Monster and Kirsty Wark zombie dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
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