As was rumoured back in August, Jeremy Paxman has indeed made the hop over to Channel 4 after his departure from Newsnight. He will be anchoring Channel 4’s election night coverage. No doubt the lure of “actually being allowed to have opinions” was too strong for him to resist – he recently came out as a “One Nation Tory”, so we can look forward to hearing more of that sort of thing in between counts in the middle of the night.
The acquisition of Paxman suggests that Channel 4 is going for something a bit more, ahem, serious that their 2010 Alternative Election Night, which featured Jimmy Carr, David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker and Lauren Laverne (and let us not forget, resulted in everybody’s least-favourite attempt at political satire, 10 O’Clock Live). Channel 4’s press release is keen to stress that their 2010 effort pulled in a massive 10.4 per cent audience share (and even outperformed ITV1).
Paxman commented: “There are new and interesting questions to ask about the way we choose our governments. This should be fun.”
But what about Jon Snow, I hear you cry? He “should not be worried in anyway”, Channel 4 creative officer Jay Hunt has said.
Considering that it was Snow who did Paxman’s exit interview when he left Newsnight (an occasion that ended with Snow performing a sung tribute to his fellow broadcaster, see below), this mole thinks they’re going to get on famously.
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