Jeremy Paxman

Paxman was born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of steel company employee and former Royal Navy lieutenant and typewriter salesman (Arthur) Keith Paxman, who left the family and settled in Australia, and Joan McKay ( Dickson; 1920–2009).

Keith Paxman's father was a worsted spinner, who became sufficiently prosperous as a travelling sales representative to send his son to public school in Bradford.

The Dickson family were wealthier, with Keith's father-in-law, a self-made success, paying the Paxman children's school fees.

Paxman is the eldest of four children: one of his brothers, Giles Paxman, was the British Ambassador to Spain (having previously been ambassador to Mexico), and the other, James, is chief executive of the Dartmoor Preservation Association.

His sister, Jenny, is a producer at BBC Radio.

Paxman was brought up in Hampshire, Bromsgrove, and Peopleton near Pershore in Worcestershire.

Jeremy Dickson Paxman (born 11 May 1950) is an English retired broadcaster, journalist, author, and television presenter.

Born in Leeds, Paxman was educated at Malvern College and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the undergraduate newspaper Varsity.

At Cambridge, he was a member of a Labour Party club and described himself as a socialist, in later life describing himself as a one-nation conservative.

He went to Malvern College in 1964, and later read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the university student newspaper Varsity.

While at Cambridge, Paxman was briefly a member of the Cambridge Universities Labour Club.

He has since been made an honorary fellow of the College.

He joined the BBC in 1972, initially at BBC Radio Brighton, relocating to London in 1977.

In following years, he worked on Tonight and Panorama, becoming a newsreader for the BBC Six O'Clock News and later a presenter on Breakfast Time and University Challenge.

Paxman joined the BBC's graduate trainee programme in 1972.

He started in local radio, at BBC Radio Brighton.

He moved to Belfast, where he reported on the Troubles.

He moved to London in 1977.

Two years later he transferred from the Tonight programme to Panorama.

After five years reporting from places such as Beirut, Uganda and Central America, he read the Six O'Clock News for two years, before moving to BBC1's Breakfast Time programme.

In 1989, he became a presenter for the BBC Two programme Newsnight, interviewing many political figures.

Paxman became known for his forthright interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians.

These appearances were sometimes criticised as aggressive, intimidating and condescending, yet also applauded as tough and incisive.

Paxman became a presenter of Newsnight in 1989.

From its revival in 1994 up until he stepped down from the show in 2023, he presented University Challenge and its Christmas spin-off from 2011 to 2022.

In 2022, he announced he was standing down, as he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

On 13 May 1997 he interviewed Michael Howard, who had been Home Secretary until 13 days earlier after he had held a meeting with Derek Lewis, head of Her Majesty's Prison Service, about the possible dismissal of the governor of Parkhurst Prison, John Marriott.

Howard was asked by Paxman the same question – "Did you threaten to overrule him [Lewis]?"

– a total of twelve times in succession (fourteen, if the first two inquiries worded somewhat differently and some time before the succession of twelve are included).

In 1998, Denis Halliday, a United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, resigned his post in Iraq, describing the effects of his own organisation's sanctions as genocide.

Paxman asked Halliday in a Newsnight interview, "Aren't you just an apologist for Saddam Hussein?"

During a 20th anniversary edition of Newsnight in 2000, Paxman told Howard that he had simply been trying to prolong the interview because the next item in the running order was not ready.

In February 2003, Paxman was criticised by the Broadcasting Standards Commission over a Newsnight interview in which he questioned the then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy about his drinking.

The commission said that the questioning was "overly intrusive in nature and tone and had exceeded acceptable boundaries for broadcast".

In January 2006, Paxman was the subject of an episode of the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?.

In 2014, Paxman left Newsnight after 25 years as its presenter.

Since then, he has done occasional work for Channel 4 News.

The documentary concluded that he was descended from Roger Packsman, a 14th-century politician from Suffolk who had changed his name to Paxman to impress the electorate (pax being Latin for 'peace').

Paxman's maternal grandmother was born in Glasgow, Scotland.

The programme generated much publicity before its transmission by displaying him with tears in his eyes on camera when informed that his impoverished great-grandmother Mary McKay's poor relief had been revoked because she had a child out of wedlock.