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Newsnight Insider

Confessions of a Newsnight insider

  • Newsnight
  • 4 Dec 07, 03:37 PM

Jeremy Paxman bought me dinner last night.
paxman203x100.jpg
Canapés, candlelight, cocktail music..? Yeah, right.
He thrusts a £20 note at me, its silver strip catching the fierce fluorescents in his office and says, “I’ll have the meal deal - and get something for yourself”.
Then with that trademark televisual twinkle in his eye he adds, ‘And don’t ever say I don’t buy you dinner!’
The 6.30 food order is something of a NN office ritual. Nearly everything we do is deadline driven and the idea of downing tools and sloping off somewhere to eat for an hour is a tad quaint.

Angry hacks

OK, we’re not talking Victorian children snatching a scoop of porridge at one end of the loom before weaving their way back again. But you do see harried journos biting off more than they can chew while trying to craft a video package for your later consumption.
As the office junior - admittedly one of the Beeb’s more senior juniors - it falls on me to place the food order. You’d think that being the Arch-Nourisher of NN would put me in a privileged position, but a hungry man is an angry man and you can’t please all of the hacks all of the time.

Get your hands off my falafels

One might be delayed in a legal meeting while another is itching to eat before being stuck in the studio for a pre-show recording. Added to which, if you don’t keep enough people on board there’s a danger of losing the free delivery.
So many variables, so little time...
But it’s all in a 13-hour day’s work and a newsroom marches on its stomach. Plus, there’s nothing like the wonder in a reporter’s eye when those foil food parcels arrive. It’s only slightly tainted as she says, ‘Jeremy - have you got hold of my falafels?’
Which brings us back to Mr P’s proffered £20 note.
I can’t prove it, but I swear that under the glare of the strip lights, on the flip side of Her Majesty, Adam Smith’s winking at me.

Comments  Post your comment

  • 1.
  • At 06:54 PM on 05 Dec 2007,
  • anon wrote:

Jeremy Paxman took you out for dinner?!

LOL

I'd 'ave hocked up!!

  • 2.
  • At 08:16 PM on 05 Dec 2007,
  • Jeanette Eccles NW London wrote:

So My friend does this revelation mean young Jeremy Paxman is
the new face of the McDonalds *Happy Meal* ? if I were Borkowski I'd be on that ad - campaign already !

  • 3.
  • At 09:55 PM on 05 Dec 2007,
  • As you know wrote:


Whatever.

I'm not watching anymore Templar T.V.

Oh ha ha ha!!!! I saw the title and thought of those dodgy 1970's movies " Confessions of a....." I wondered what was going to be revealed!!Shame it was only food!!! ;-)

  • 5.
  • At 11:35 PM on 05 Dec 2007,
  • Contrite wrote:

I'm sorry. I would have been honoured if I had been taken to dinner - even a McDonalds.
Friends? X

  • 6.
  • At 12:15 AM on 06 Dec 2007,
  • L Stanley wrote:

Jeremy has class :). He is very good behind the scenes and a real professional at heart. I am glad he is as friendly behind the scenes as he appears in front of the camera and he should be given a knighthood ASAP. If he would accept it that is ;).

  • 7.
  • At 12:02 AM on 28 Feb 2008,
  • Richard Clifford wrote:

Sorry to be off message, but, Jeremy Paxman is, for me, a shock winner of a Royal TV Society Award. He has one approach to interviews (by no means a 'broad range') and he exists 100% within the Westminster bubble: No notion of an alternative to 1st past-the-post Labour/Tory politics.

  • 8.
  • At 12:08 AM on 28 Feb 2008,
  • Richard Clifford wrote:

Sorry to be off message, but, Jeremy Paxman is, for me, a shock winner of a Royal TV Society Award. He has one approach to interviews (by no means a 'broad range') and he exists 100% within the Westminster bubble: No notion of an alternative to 1st past-the-post Labour/Tory politics.

  • 9.
  • At 12:11 AM on 28 Feb 2008,
  • Richard Clifford wrote:

Sorry to be off message, but, Jeremy Paxman is, for me, a shock winner of a Royal TV Society Award. He has one approach to interviews (by no means a 'broad range') and he exists 100% within the Westminster bubble: No notion of an alternative to 1st past-the-post Labour/Tory politics.

  • 10.
  • At 12:29 AM on 28 Feb 2008,
  • Richard Clifford wrote:

Sorry to be off message, but, Jeremy Paxman is, for me, a shock winner of a Royal TV Society Award. He has one approach to interviews (by no means a 'broad range') and he exists 100% within the Westminster bubble: No notion of an alternative to 1st past-the-post Labour/Tory politics.

  • 11.
  • At 12:45 AM on 28 Feb 2008,
  • Richard Clifford wrote:

Sorry to be off message, but, Jeremy Paxman is, for me, a shock winner of a Royal TV Society Award. He has one approach to interviews (by no means a 'broad range') and he exists 100% within the Westminster bubble: No notion of an alternative to 1st past-the-post Labour/Tory politics.

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