1. Silvio Berlusconi: “Is it true you called Angela Merkel an unfuckable lard-arse?” (2014)
Worth watching for the casual frankness with which Paxman asks the former Italian premier about the choice words he apparently used about the German chancellor:
2. Russell Brand: “Grow it longer, tangle it into your armpit hair” (2013)
A modern classic. Brand ribs Paxman about his beard, and Paxman decides his interview subject is “a very trivial man” – but it’s clear he likes him really:
3. Chloe Smith: “Do you ever think you’re incompetent?” (2012)
When the Chancellor sacrificed his junior minister on the altar of Newsnight for a fuel duty u-turn, it jettisoned the one-time “rising star’s” burgeoning political career:
4. Conrad Black: “You are a convicted fraudster” (2012)
Paxman and the former media baron clash as he is questioned over allegations against him. “Will you stop this bourgeois priggishness?” Black spits at one point:
5. Boris Johnson: “Tell us how much it would cost” (2008)
Then a London Mayoral candidate, Boris refused 12 times to answer a question about buses:
6. George Galloway: “Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in parliament?” (2005)
A combative interview with the Respect MP after he famously defeated Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow:
7. Tony Blair: “I’m just trying to explore the sort of chap you are” (2003)
Paxman goes for the then-prime minister on his “religious conviction”:
8. Michael Howard: “Did you threaten to overrule him?” (1997)
Probably Paxo’s most notoriously Paxman-like political interview, in which he asks the then-home secretary twelve times whether he threatened to overrule the director general of HM Prison Service.
UPDATE:
Here’s what happened on Jeremy Paxman’s last night:
He rode on a tandem with Boris
Not sure why.
He mocked the weather report
In an in-joke about his serial derisive attitude to having to tell us the weather, Paxman said: “Tomorrow’s weather: more of the same. Don’t know why they make such a fuss about it.”
He asked Michael Howard ONE LAST TIME
As a nod to his infamous interview with the then-Home Secretary, in which he asked him the same question 12 times “Did you threaten to overrule him?”, Howard popped up during the show, and Paxman asked “Did you?” “No, but feel free to ask me another 11 times”, came the reply.
He gave one of his classic beleagured-politician put-downs
Ed Milliband is as “popular as a flatulent dog in a lift”, he told us with a sneer.
He was low-key about his departure
Paxman had said he wanted “no fuss” about him leaving, but that didn’t quite materialise what with the nostalgia and silliness that peppered the programme. But he signed off in an understated manner: “Thank you for watching. I hope you go on enjoying the programme. Goodnight and goodbye.”
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