Award winning British journalist and TV presenter Jeremy Paxman is notorious for his hard hitting questions and abrasive interviewing technique. Beginning his career in local radio in Brighton, Paxman soon moved to Belfast where he reported on the troubles in Northern Ireland making his mark as an investigative journalist. Shortly after his return to the UK, he worked as a reporter on the BBC television show Tonight leading to a reporting role in Panorama which took him all over the world on his various assignments. In 1989, Paxman became the anchor of the BBC television show, Newsnight making him a household name in Britain.
After his fascinating talk at the Royal Geographical Society about his new book ‘Empire’, he stopped for a chat with Stanfords and answered some questions from our social media fans and followers.
What was the inspiration behind writing ‘Empire’?
Do you want the long version or the short version? In summary it is simply that this is a subject that is really not discussed in this country because the boring old education establishment has decreed that there is really one way of looking at this whole imperial experience which is that it was an unalloyed bad thing. Therefore a line has been drawn underneath it and we simply don’t need to engage with it anymore, it is just something that we should be slightly embarrassed about. I don’t think that this will do, I don’t think it will do because I think it’s a really partial version of the truth. There were many shameful things during the period of imperial adventure but there were other things that were perfectly laudable. The second thing is that I don’t think that you can understand who we are today without understanding where we have come from and simply to ignore what was the driving force for much of our history is just stupid. So that’s where I’m coming from.
Was it difficult to make the transition from journalist and presenter to author or was it a natural progression?
I think they are part of the same trade really. The real bugger about life is I think you can only understand it looking backwards but you have to live it looking forwards which makes it really complicated and irritating. I can see now looking back on my life that what’s always motivated me is curiosity. I really like meeting people and I like finding things out and words. Really there’s a continuum; very short journalism, twitterish length is at one side and encyclopedias are at the other end and the sort of journalism that I’ve been engaged with is in the middle. I say there’s a continuum and they are essentially not that different. What gets me out of the bed in the morning is curiosity and what I love is words so I don’t see a big difference, the mechanics are the same. If someone says to me do me one hundred words by 10pm on someone (points to a painting hanging on the wall) I could do it. I could find out about it and I could write it. It’s very different to getting up in the morning, I customarily write by getting up early, and knocking out a thousand words by breakfast time. It’s different but actually in essence all you’re doing its putting words onto a page, the scope and scale are different but the mechanics are the same. The first requirement of journalistic writing is to interest the reader. I would not for a second mention myself in the same breath as particularly distinguished novelists because I can’t do fiction so I’m not making a comparison here but if you look at Dickens, he was a journalist before he was a novelist. It is something that is not too far away and this sniffiness with which ‘serious writers’ dismiss all other workings I think is very misplaced.
What advice would you have for a journalist starting out today looking back at your career?
Don’t do it (laughs). I think this is a trade in which nobody knows which way is up. Not all but a very large proportion of newspapers in this country are in very serious trouble. Then there’s the electronic media which people say will blossom, well actually I’m not so sure about that. I think we’re in really difficult waters and the other characteristic is of course that it’s a young person’s game. I am by a long margin, a very long margin, the oldest person on the daily side of Newsnight and I love it. I really enjoy it as I like meeting people and finding things out but there is no longevity. When I was 20 I couldn’t imagine being 40 but the wise person at 20 thinks what will I be doing at 40? Chances are that by the time you are 40 you may have a family to support and you certainly will be thinking of the remaining 20 or probably 30 years that you’re going to have to work and ideally you want to be in a position that you have some sort of skill that you can deploy throughout your life. I’m not sure that is the case any longer with journalism. It’s not a career any longer. You can acquire a set of skills. I don’t think there is any better job and there is no job I’d rather have but I look back and I think you were bloody lucky. You ended up a square peg in a square hole or a round peg in a round hole, I was really really lucky and there were a lot of times when I was scared, a lot of times when I was lonely, a lot of times I felt inadequate but that’s true of everybody in every trade. This trade has been absolutely wonderful for me and I’ve really enjoyed it but I don’t think I would have had what one would call a career. I’ve merely done things that seemed interesting at the time which is slightly different. It’s a horrible cliché but you must follow your star as it were. I really would not like to be sitting or lying around at the age of 70 saying I wish I’d done that.
Date: 24/11/2011
Author: Clodagh O’ Brien
