Name: Jeremy Paxman.
Age: 66.
Appearance: Easter Island statue meets missing Mount Rushmore head.
I knew it! Emily Maitlis just isn’t cutting it, is she? He’s coming back to Newsnight, riding in on a white stallion of hard news and pointless adversariality, if that is indeed a word! No, he’s not.
Oh. He’s in a spat with a free newspaper aimed at the over-50s called the Mature Times.
Oh crikey. What has he said now? He took issue with an issue he found in a hotel lobby and wrote that “mature” meant “on the verge of incontinence, idiocy and peevish valetudinarianism”.
I’ve missed him. And he called it a “dreary publication” full of adverts for “hearing aids, reclining chairs, copper insoles, stairlifts, devices to help you in and out of the bath [and] cruises somewhere in the company of other virtual corpses”, as if this is all older people are interested in.
Are they not? Well, he’s not. You wouldn’t be either, if you conceived of other people your own age as virtual corpses on the verge of incontinence, idiocy and peevish valetudinarianism.
I wouldn’t want them leaving great patches of peevish valetudinarianism on the sofa, that’s for sure. Has the publisher of Mature Times taken this lying down? Perhaps on one of his recliner chairs? He has not. Andrew Silk has come out fighting against the man who suggested the publication be renamed “The Surgical Stocking Sentinel” or “Winceyette Weekly”.
Do tell. He likened Paxman to Jeremy Clarkson without the charisma or money.
Ooh! Sick burn, as I believe the young folk say! It’s pretty good, isn’t it? He’s also called on him to apologise to the 21m over-50s in the country.
Oh, can’t they take a joke? Paxo also called them “humourless”.
Ah. And he said there was a good argument for banning them from EU referendums and the like: “It’s simply not fair to allow people to vote for a future they won’t live to enjoy or endure.”
I miss him more and more. Maybe he will come back to Newsnight yet. Semi-retirement does seem to be leaving him with idle hands.
Do say: “I would totally buy Winceyette Weekly.”
Don’t say: “Eh? What? Speak UP, young man!”
