Sorry to interrupt whatever you were doing, but I am talking now and I will talk over you. Is basically Jeremy Paxman’s entire interviewing style.

What we witnessed during last night’s “Battle for Number 10”, apart from the introduction of a new hero, the man who muttered “bollocks, that’s bollocks” when Theresa May claimed to be putting more money into the NHS, was the death knell of a once dominant interview style.

Paxman, who I grew up idolising as a smart, tough-talking interviewer, basking in the glory of his Michael Howard encounter in which the then home secretary refused to answer a question 12 times, has sadly become a shouty old man and parody of his former self. Posing the same question 12 times was an effective, on-the-spot skewering of an evasive politician. The problem is, like a football team studying videos of an opposition’s formation, the tactic becomes rather predictable after 20 years (that Howard interview was in 1997).

He talked over Theresa May making a mistake, missing the chance to pick up on it

It’s a style much imitated, and it still occasionally works – witness the intense awkwardness of Ed Miliband delivering the same line ad infinitum during the 2015 general election campaign – but the problem is that an interviewer repeating the same question over and over is no less frustrating or artificial than a politician repeating the same slogan. Sometimes Paxman even carries on asking the question when it has essentially already been answered, and he’s failed to listen to the answer. How will you get good quotes, if you never let people speak?

His other irritating habit of interrupting his guests and shouting over them is counterproductive. Last night he talked over May making a mistake, missing the chance to pick up on it, as well as rendering the interview almost unfollowable as its structure fell apart. That’s disrespectful to audience members and viewers who actually wanted to learn something and see the interviewees properly challenged.

On balance, however, Paxman fared better with May than with Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader responded to his braying with exasperated sighs, making Paxman look absurd, like an old man yelling at clouds. With May, there were glimpses of the old Paxo – subjecting his interviewees to incredulous facial expressions, unnerving them, and creating space for them to ramble into trouble; give a struggling swimmer more sea and watch them drown.

We have reached the point now where traditional media – radio and TV interviews, newspapers – are no longer the default, where other forms of media – podcasts, social media, vlogging – are extras. Journalists have to be competent across all formats now. Some old hands have adapted brilliantly. Take for instance Channel 4’s Jon Snow, who has 1.2 million Twitter followers and whose videos often go viral on Facebook, in contrast to, say, the BBC’s John Humphrys, who calls Twitter “utterly pointless”, and treats anything that isn’t a multitrack recorder with disdain. Social media isn’t just the domain of so-called digital natives; it’s how a great many of us now get our news.



Theresa May’s authority slips as she bores Britain with empty answers | Owen Jones Read more

The truth is, audiences have become tired of older white men talking over people (as much in general life as in interview set-ups, but that’s a whole other piece), and tired of those who don’t feel the need to adapt to the changing flow of media. Paxman, David Dimbleby, Humphrys. The Today programme presenter’s disparaging of, and ignorance towards, Twitter doesn’t make him intellectually superior, it makes him look like a bad journalist who isn’t keeping up with his industry.

Paxo too needs to understand that interrupting every second makes it very hard to create a succinct clip to share with a wider audience. Emma Barnett interviewing Corbyn on Woman’s Hour this morning on his child care policies understands this, and it’s partly why that interview is getting immense play.

There was a time when Paxman’s bullishness was amusing. I enjoyed his disdain for Russell Brand’s non-voting position, and the period in which every episode of Have I Got News For You included a clip of him rolling his eyes at Newsnight’s attempt to modernise. But eventually, that routine gets old. That was a large part of the cringe factor of watching Paxman challenge Corbyn on his decades-old views – but in the same style he’s been deploying for nearly as long. Paxman might still think yelling over people makes for a strong interview technique, but as our new friend in the audience might say, that’s bollocks.





