At last a Life Review
Finally a Life ReviewThe disappointing privacy of Jeremy Paxman
Books title: One third of the way into his memoirs, Jeremy Paxman asks why someone would mind writing a novel and confirms the opinion that every reporter thinks he has a novel in him, but this is probably the place where it should be. We do not therefore see the wife who has been sharing his life for three centuries or who learns that she has three kids.
Says life at St. Catharine's College was all he ever hoped for: At the end of his studies (2:1 in English) he is first turned down and then offers a position at the BBC where he works on the news. Here the mystery novel finally comes to life. Here the ambiguities and generalizations are finally wiped away to give an idea of the one-of-a-kind event of being Jeremy in Newsnight - journalist and then Newsnight' s guest for 25 years - instead of just being one of the many kids of the 50s who were hit at home (weren't we all?) or almost every social high school boy.
It' s as if the Paxman pro stadium freed him from the backgrounds of the Northern Ireland war, the creepy meetings with Gerry Adams, the filthy protest and famine strike of the H-block, the rising of the rivalling Republic and'loyalist' paramilitary and the dilemma of trying to cover the messages without giving the terrorists'the air of publicity'.
In the Westminster bladder ("the interviewer is there to talk for the rulers, and a newspaperman who has worked all his life in the political community has lost this perspective"); and above all, the inner life of the BBC, his boss for more than half of his life.
She says it's a disgrace that Bough is forever reminded of his predilection for coke - and then spends three pages telling that tale anew. Newsnight' s disgrace at Jimmy SAVILLE is another cauldron that has been rethought in detail by a man who is clearly concerned by his topic. Obviously he fell in love with Newsnight, but he felt forced by allegiance to remain for a while after the dispute over the spikes of his savile inquiry and the ensuing ill-informed graffiti on Lord McAlpine, the deceased Conservative Party bursar.
Meirion Jones, the 2011 promoter who committed himself to "nailing" Savile, is commendable to defend, but the issue remains: if Jones, as he said, had known what the DJ was up to in the 1970s, why did he have waited more than 30 years for Savile to die to do something about it?
So we say goodbye in the arrival hall, and soon he' s thinking about where to go.