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Jeremy Paxman in his early days at the BBC.
Jeremy Paxman in his early days at the BBC. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian
Jeremy Paxman in his early days at the BBC. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian

Jeremy Paxman opens up about his strained relationship with father

This article is more than 8 years old

Naval officer Keith Paxman beat the young Jeremy regularly and later told him journalism was not a worthwhile career

The former presenter of BBC2’s Newsnight Jeremy Paxman has spoken about his strained relationship with his father, saying his feelings towards him were pitched between resentment and hatred.

In an interview with the Times Magazine, Paxman said his father Keith’s belief that reporting was not a worthwhile career left him wondering if he ever used his talents to their full potential.

“It wasn’t that sort of close, intimate relationship,” Paxman said, explaining that his father left him and his family and moved to Australia when he was a 24-year-old BBC trainee.

He admitted that he did not know for sure whether or not his parents had ever divorced, though he presumed they did because his father remarried in New Zealand.

Paxman’s father, a naval officer, was away at sea when his son was born and did not react well when they were first introduced. “Relations between us never really improved much.”

His father would beat him regularly. “My feelings ranged from resentment to passionate hatred,” Paxman told the Times.

Keith Paxman had some success after leaving the navy, though it was family wealth that sent Jeremy and his siblings to private school.

Jeremy Paxman saw his father as a try-hard who once introduced his son to his golf-club friends as “one of those homosexual communists from the BBC”.

A decade after his father left the family to go to Australia – and with contact having been limited to a few Christmas cards – Paxman went looking for him.

“I was astonished by his lack of curiosity. I mean, there were grandchildren he’d never seen, spouses he’d never met. It seemed as if we were part of a life he’d put behind him … I wanted to see if he was all right and I was slightly concerned in case I was becoming him.”

Reminded of a childhood story in which his father was found crying on the bathroom floor, Paxman said: “I didn’t want to feel I was living my life as he lived his life … I think he was actually a vulnerable man and he probably thought cutting himself off was the only way to survive.”

He said he regretted that he did not know how old his mother was when she died, though he was present.

“It’s strange, death, isn’t it? However old you are, when you’ve finally lost both parents, there is a feeling of being orphaned. And I think it’s very cruel that all the very vibrant memories I have of my mother are now intertwined with the memory of how she looked at the point of death.

“I think everyone is scared to some extent of becoming their parents and I suppose that would have been the case. The family relationships, I find they don’t resonate happily to me.”

He admitted to feeling some doubt about whether or not he had used his gifts effectively. “We all ought to ask ourselves that as we approach the finishing line: could I have done something else? I haven’t got any great talents. Well, perhaps I could have put them to better purpose.”

Asked if that was influenced by his father’s view that journalists did not produce anything tangible, and were worse for it, he said: “I think that’s a fair observation, and that is what I feel.”

He stressed, however, that he did not want to be seen as someone who blamed any failures on other people.

“There comes a point, about the age of 40, when you have to stop saying how you are is a consequence of how you were brought up. And particularly when you are 66, it is pathetic to say: ‘I am as I am because of things that happened in my childhood.’”

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