Paxman blasts TV colleagues as ‘a bunch of failed actors’

Former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman isn’t one to grow old gracefully.

Just weeks after offending Britain’s pensioners by branding them “virtual corpses” riddled with “incontinence and idiocy”, he’s launched a blistering attack on former colleagues at the BBC, branding them “a bunch of failed actors.”

The 66-year-old star singled out newsreader Nicholas Witchell, the Beeb’s Royal Correspondent, for particularly nasty attention, calling him a “buttoned up presenter who had written a book about the Loch Ness Monster.”

Presumably not a paperback on Jezza’s bedtime reading list, then.

The outspoken journalist, who was speaking at an event to plug his autobiography, said many news anchors are nothing more than “failed actors”, and recalled how one producer said witheringly of a particularly excitable news reader: “Stick a fresh battery in the news bunny.”

Hmmm… any guesses? Well, asked if it was a reference to Huw Edwards, Paxo replied: “I have no further comment to make.”

But surely he likes former Newsnight colleague Jeremy Vine? Nope, not a fan – he once referred to the Radio 2 presenter as “mini me” and “the sorcerer’s apprentice.”

Ouch. So it seems the only person he has any time for is Channel 4’s John Snow.

Paxo also provided an inkling of where he might get his gift for a biting put-down from while discussing his dad Keith. Paxman senior once introduced Jeremy to golf club friends as “one of those homosexual communists from the BBC”.

“Did I love my father?” he writes. “My feelings ranged from resentment to passionate hatred.”