Jeremy Paxman derides Newsnight producers as ’13-year-olds’
Jeremy Paxman has fired a parting shot at the producers of Newsnight, days after leaving the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, after deriding its producers as ’13-year-olds’.
Betraying a degree of friction behind the scenes the avuncular host, who spent 25 years at the helm of the show, denigrated his own producers as wet behind the ears idealists seeking to ‘change the world’.
On the last edition of the programme mayor of London Boris Johnson was filmed describing Paxman as the ‘last’ one-nation Tory at the BBC.
Responding to audience questions on this at a history festival whilst promoting his new book Britain’s Great War, Paxman said: “I have to be frank, I suppose I am a one-nation Tory, yes. Look, Newsnight is made by 13-year-olds. It's perfectly normal when you're young that you want to change the world.
"The older you get, the more you realise what a fools' errand much of that is and that the thing to do is to manage the best you can to the advantage of as many people as possible."
Paxman then added; “It's complete b------s, of course, typical Boris."