Words Dept.

I’ve just spotted Stephen Fry talking a load of arse, poo and widdle (bollocks, in other words) about the issue of MPs’ expenses on Newsnight (video clip here). According to Fry, MPs doing things like claiming £2,000 of public money to have the moats of their manor houses cleaned (Douglas Hogg), or £35,000 for a “second home” [...]

One thing that’s good about BBC iPlayer is that when you see something unusual on Newsnight, you can go and check that it really happened and that you haven’t just fallen asleep and dreamt it. Last night, for example, I could have sworn I saw Jeremy Paxman flirting with a semi-articulate 20-year-old girl called Stacey. [...]

Kirsty Wark on Newsnight just confronted the Cowley Street Vampires (Vince Cable and Simon Hughes) about the demise of Sir Menzies Campbell as Liberal Democrat leader by quoting a fellow Lib Dem MP’s reaction to the news. Unfortunately I didn’t catch the full quote, nor the MP who spoke it*. But it included the line [...]

Following Jeremy Paxman’s “what is television for” speech at the Edinburgh International TV conference – and a seemingly endless stream of stories about manipulation and fakery of telly programmes – the focus of fears about how TV is misleading viewers seems to be shifting from entertainment programmes to news. Now Newsnight and Five News are [...]

Jeremy Paxman has provoked a veritable explosion of mild outrage in the papers after daring to question the age-old tradition that blokes with grey hair must always wear a tie while at work. His Newsnight blog suggests ties are now the preserve of “dodgy estate agents” (nothing like a 1980s stereotype to start the day), [...]