Revelations

"Cheerful in his disdain, incredulous in his responses to shallow or evasive answers, quick to probe a weakness or to pull a dismissive face, he leaves many of his victims feeling they should be grateful he had wasted his evening eviscerating them"

(Jeremy is) "genuinely angry and tortured"

"Mr Paxman’s familiar approach – snorting and whinnying like a disdainful racehorse – suddenly felt both tired and tiresome. If anything, his relentless interrupting actually appeared to get the studio audience on Mr Corbyn’s side"

"That clever man, who seems to be a bit obsessed with death"

"It was said of William Blake that he was what a bad artist would be like if he were a genius; Paxman is what the man on the Clapham omnibus would be like if he were a genius"

"Handsome guy"

"I see similarities between him and Jeremy Clarkson. He could be Clarkson without the money - Clarkson has made a living from being offensive. Paxman tries to be the intellectual one but he’s lacking the charisma of Clarkson"

"Well, I have to say Mr Paxman, that at the sprightly age of 66 you are indeed one of the 12 million people over 65 in this country – get over it"

"Paxo, put your tie back on! There's nothing more laughably pathetic than an old man trying to be groovy. Paxman is now less sexy than he was. He has robbed himself of dignity and he has robbed Britain’s middle-aged women of a fantasy"

"I object to the degrading and demeaning language that he used towards our readers! However, I suspect that with the high media profile enjoyed by Mr Paxman, comes a massive ego as well – but perhaps it’s time for that ego to contemplate a little!"

"To survive Jeremy Paxman, I simply stared at his tie"

"Sexist and ageist"

"Now, I’m all open for criticism, and I’m happy to accept this where it’s due – but what I really, really do object to is being referred to as a ‘cheeky bastard’ – in fact I’d go so far as to say that it’s downright insulting and unprofessional for a man of Mr Paxman’s standing to use such language in such a way"

"So, Paxman, what is your contribution to positive living? Anyone can chide and deride, but how many people’s lives do you enrich?"

"Paxman wouldn’t worry me. I’ve come from an engineering background. You have to deal with all types of people and you have to have a flair for handling that. You don’t tremble at the knees when Paxman interviews you. He makes mistakes like everyone else. I’d wipe the floor with him"

"Here’s Paxman ranting on about something again. Wittgenstein said the limits of your language are the limits of your world. Paxman’s is becoming increasingly limited, I’m afraid"

"Paxman is a West London wanker"

"You’re a priggish, gullible British fool. I'm proud of being able to endure a discussion like this without getting up and smashing your face in"

"(Paxman) looks disdainful and contemptuous and furious with his guests because he by and large is. You can’t fake these things on television"

"The thing about Jeremy is that he is a genuinely tortured, angry individual"

"I like Jeremy, he’s just an asshole"

"Don't be so obnoxious. You’re important, Jeremy, but not that important! You don’t get to decide the result of the election"

"(Paxman's Russell Brand interview) was hardly Frost/Nixon – more like watching a monkey throwing its excrement at a foghorn"

"Am I allowed to fire Jeremy Paxman?"

"Most of us would prefer to be smothered in honey and locked in a room with a swarm of bad-tempered bees than suffer a 20-minute interrogation by Jeremy Paxman"

"(Paxman) is like a particularly virulent, malodorous expulsion of flatulence in my confined airspace"

"Paxman is a guy who lives off politics, and he spends all his time sneering and labelling us as rogues and charlatans”

"Horrible little man"

"You are actually conducting - even by your standards - one of the most absurd interviews I have ever participated in"

"I have to say (Jeremy), this is the most meaningless line of questioning I've ever heard from you"

"Newsnight rang offering me a ‘sensible’ interview with Jeremy Paxman about my next move.  I didn’t return the call"

"He's a smug, supercilious, pompous, overrated weasel"

"Jeremy Paxman still sounds as if he’s doing an impression of Chris Morris’s impression of him. The nostril-flaring consternation. The barks of contempt. The withering headmasterly sighs at other people’s imbecility. And, when the topic turns to tragedy, the parental, what-have-we-done-to-the-world head-shaking. Personally, I love it. He’s almost as good at it as Morris is"

"Paxo’s decided to quit as the BBC’s interrogator-in-chief. MPs no longer have to crap in their pants whenever they’re invited onto Newsnight"

"Paxman in Beirut. We bundled him onto a plane and he did the outside broadcast in the same cotton jacket that he’d been wearing on the plane. He looked a mess and there were comments saying he’d obviously spent the night in a Biffa bin"

"It is always a pleasure – if one can call it that – to be interviewed by him and I’m sure viewers will miss his straight talking and tough interviewing, although I suspect a number of MPs will be quietly breathing a collective sigh of relief"

"He’s dyspeptic about pretty much everything. Ideas are flattened. Almost everything you suggest Jeremy will think is ‘preposterous’ or ‘infantile’ or an otherwise ‘completely lamentable’ idea"

"He’s going to be old himself, and I hope he regrets every phrase that he has made about old people"

"I’ve always enjoyed my clashes with Jeremy Paxman. His style is what he is – sardonic, sometimes downright rude but always forensic, incisive and doing the job he was paid to do. He’ll be sorely missed and I shall be sorry not to cross swords with him in this particular theatre in the future"

"There's nothing like a smug Englishman slagging us off to get us riled-up, red-faced and roaring. When Jeremy Paxman looked down his well-bred, horsey nose at Belfast, deriding us for costing too much in UK taxes, wearing an excessive amount of fake tan and having a smelly Christmas market, we reacted with outrage"

"Jeremy Paxman was always rude to me - but then he was rude to everyone"

"Don’t look at me all weary (Jeremy), like you’re at a fireside with a pipe and your beard"

"I don't know if Jeremy Paxman genuinely does know all of the answers on University Challenge but he blimmin' acts like he does. That annoys me a bit because it's easy to be smug when you have the answers in front of you"

"How come I feel so cross with you? It can't just be because of that beard. It's gorgeous. If the Daily Mail don't want it, I do. I'm against them - grow it longer, tangle it into your armpit hair"

"Paxo with a beard is like me going blonde - there are just some things that are not meant to be"

"Please don't think that I'm on trial in front of you, Jeremy. You're not fit to be my judge"

"Although the committee did not agree with the complainant that Mr Paxman's use of the terms 'religious hogwash' and 'stupid people' were intended to cause deliberate offence, particularly to those with religious views and beliefs, it nevertheless agreed that they were offensive to some of the audience and that there was no clear editorial purpose for their use in the context of this Newsnight item, taking account of generally accepted standards"

"Certainly the picture of the patronising Englishman"

"He has a technique and he is compulsively belligerent and the only way to deal with it, unless he has reason to be so self-righteous, is to be belligerent back to him"

"I think this is when you should practice the power of silence, Jeremy"

"Jeremy Paxman is always good value, being rude and thinking everybody’s a crook except for himself"

"(Paxman) leant in close to me and said with a weird, creepy smirk: ‘You know, I don’t really hate you…’ The sheer presumptive arrogance of this statement made me laugh, as if I give a monkey’s cuss whether he hates me or not"

"Come on, Mr Paxman, you at least have the ability to educate yourself and not lie on your own programme. You are accusing me of a lot of things here that are simply outrageous"

"I am privileged to have been on the receiving end of a Paxman grilling… and have always enjoyed the challenge"

"Memo to ‘Paxo’: I’ll let you know if and when I ever fancy being civil to you again. 

Until that time, stay well away from me you sanctimonious, spineless little toad"

"Oh, you're asking me for a date, Jeremy?"

"I had no idea what Jeremy earned, but I was on a five-figure sum. One day, I joked to a boss that he should feel pleased every time he saw me, ‘because each time I walk into the building, I save you five grand’"

"He is really like an upmarket Simon Cowell"

"He's the most unpleasant person going. I'd like to get into a debate, without him having a day to think up questions to make people seem awkward. I'd like to see how clever he is then"

"I'd want to question him - and make him feel like an idiot"

"Yes, I know what your question is. I am choosing to answer it in my way rather than yours"

"Right that's it. I'm working on a moustache for Thursday's Newsnight"

"(Paxman) was still doing the old despairing headmaster routine – withering glance, long-suffering sigh, hand clamped to the side of his face – but more than once he allowed Mr Cameron to get away with flabby, evasive answers"

"For Paxman to take a broad brush to somebody like Robert Burns is really doing the bard a disservice, Scotland a disservice, and a disservice that reflects badly on himself. He will long be remembered after Jeremy Paxman has long been forgotten"

"(Paxman's) trying to trade off his image as a grumpy middle-aged man"

"At an end-of-year party, a producer, Allie Wharf, who prided herself on a close relationship with Paxo, drunkenly pinned me to the wall and told me: ‘As long as Paxman’s on Newsnight, you are f**ked’"

"My real problem, I reflected, was that I was also called Jeremy. I was the guest who arrives at the wedding in the same dress as the mother of the bride. Except I couldn’t carry it off so well — I was so conscious of not being soft cop to Paxo’s hard-man that I’d deliberately gone the other way, interviewing people with such ferocity that I often looked as if someone had parked a ride-on mower on my foot"

"You don't like talking about yourself. Let's have an admission, in a democracy do elected politicians have a special status? Ought they be allowed then to finish a point without constantly being interrupted?"

"Is it public service broadcasting for you to take four months off to write a book? Are you not paid large dollops of cash to go off and play golf and tiddlywinks?"