Jeremy Paxman Departs The Jeremy Paxman Show (Newsnight)

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ast week the ‘great lion of BBC journalism’ and ‘the scourge of politicians’ called it a day after 25 years in the saddle as the principle Newsnight anchorman. Of course there was no thanksgiving, tears or even a wobbly lip. The ‘great lion’ did, however, agree to mark his departure by partaking in some minor frivolities, going on a bike ride with Boris and presenting his favourite news item – the weather. Newsnight will certainly be weakened by his departure; it might as well have been called The Jeremy Paxman Show. Fortunately, the ‘scourge of politicians’ won’t disappear entirely as his enthusiasm for reading out tricky questions to bright young things and making high pitched utterances of disdain remains undiminished. 

As a Newsnight anchor I shall miss him, more as an entertainer than as an informer. He had charisma and star quality and was a cut above most of his contemporaries. In a programming era increasingly driven by ‘accessibility’ he was a welcome intellectual bulwark. Indeed, if Jeremy Paxman presents a programme, you know that it comes with a triple A intellectual rating. The questions on University Challenge are as difficult as they ever were.

Urbane Londoners: UKIP welcomes your sneering

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mong urbane Londoners, admitting to a fondness for UKIP and its man of the moment* Nigel Farage is about as bad as confessing never to have watched Mad Men and The Killing. Maybe that’s a touch extreme; perhaps a better analogy would be about as distasteful as drinking blue top milk or serving up a Dairylea Dunker as a canapé?

Despite making inroads across much of the UK in the Local and European elections last week – Nigel was particularly excited** by UKIP’s gains in Wales – UKIP failed to convince a large chunk of London voters of its merits. And why was this? Well, one reason for UKIP’s London failure, as acceded by Suzanne Evans, UKIP’s communities spokesperson, when interviewed on Radio 4 last week, was UKIP’s difficulty in appealing to the ‘cultured, educated, and young’, of which it would seem London is absolutely packed to the rafters.

Grant Shapps's Love Bombs

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eader beware! In May 2015 when the Coalition will finally call it a day and ask you and I to go to the polls, there is the real risk that you might be accosted by a man armed with a 'love bomb'. Mercifully the love bomb will not actually make you fall head over heels in love with its creator, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Grant Shapps, but it is not without potency. The love bomb has been designed to ensure that those of us who perhaps agree with one or two Conservative party policies, and have nagging doubts that Labour can't be trusted to manage the economy and the Liberal Democrats can't be trusted with anything, will vote Conservative.

Anyway, flippancy aside, the love bombs simply represent Grant Shapps's election strategy (as many have done before him) of encouraging the Conservative candidates in the key forty marginal constituencies in the 2015 General Election to become 'local champions'. As 'local champions' they will champion local issues and sympathise with the NIMBYs by, for example, opposing any proposed train line or any house building programme in the area, which might if enacted – best whisper it – result in house prices going down! What could be worse than that? Of course, if the candidates looked to their 'moral compass' (what a horribly sanctimonious phrase) they might well think that improving the creaking national transport infrastructure and building more houses were causes to endorse.

We're All Morally Repugnant

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ntil very recently the sardonic, Bob Monkhousian Jimmy Carr didn't pay any tax. This happy state of affairs for Mr Carr would no doubt have continued but for our very own Prime Minister's heroic* intervention when on telly, visibly outraged, he lambasted Mr Carr as 'morally repugnant' for paying less tax than a toilet attendant.** It worked a treat, as the next day (possibly the day after), Mr Carr surfaced from his King Midas-like opulence with his countenance markedly transformed: earnestness had replaced sardonicism. Quite the transformation. So full of contrition was Mr Carr that he announced that he had made an 'error of judgement', offered to slip his father a few quid for allowing him  free bed and board in his impecunious early days as a comedian and, most dramatically of all, promised to exit K2*** (the tax scheme, not the second highest mountain on Earth). We'll probably never know for certain why Mr Carr voluntarily agreed to become a 50% (soon to be 45%) income tax payer, but someone with a placid mind, like myself, might conclude that the unwanted, negative publicity – exposing Mr Carr as a horrible hypocrite – might impact detrimentally upon his gig sales and television appearances. Cynical, perhaps even sardonic of me, I know.

Dastardly Internships

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oor old Nick Clegg. He probably had hoped that if he was ever at the heart of the machinations of government that he would have been the person associated with and credited for spearheading some weighty initiatives. A root and branch reform of the welfare system perhaps? Overthrowing a political despot maybe? What about standing up against a rise in university tuition fees (too difficult)?

Instead, the Deputy PM during his 19 months in office has been the principle advocate of what can hardly be described as two of the most pressing issues of our time: the Alternative Vote and the unfairness of many internships today. This is admittedly a bit unfair as Clegg has been a key man in the government's laudable commitment to raise the income tax personal allowance threshold to £10,000 by the end of the Coalition's term in Parliament: an integral part of making work pay.

Royal Hysteria

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ccording to the BBC (the organisation whom you give £145.50 a year), 24.5 million people in the UK watched Wills and Kate's big day in its entirety and 34 million in part.

These statistics, and the concomitant national fervour, came as something of a surprise to me as before the Royal Wedding my friends and colleagues had shown (I should say feigned) as much interest in the occasion as the Alternative Vote. 'Would you watch the Royal Wedding with Auntie I asked?'  The overwhelming response was 'I couldn't care less' and 'day off work – whoop, whoop!' Not one person bellowed out 'God Save the Queen' or even offered the more moderate response of 'I'll probably watch it on telly'. Clearly a few people in my YouGov-esque poll of about 50 were either telling a few porkies, as admitting to Royalist sympathies is not uber-hip, or severely underestimated their British propensity for being a great big nosy parker.

Thankfully there are some who are not as credulous as me (well done India Knight) who suspected that the national urge to snoop, stick their beak in and pry into the lives of the rich and famous would override any trendy aloofness. Just look at the popularity of celebrity lifestyle magazines and television programmes like 'Come Dine With Me': we can't get enough of this sort of thing.