SEVEN DAYS INTERVIEW THE INQUISITION

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Oct 8, 2006 | by Stephen Phelan

His day job is monstering politicians, and his latest book rigorously examines the monarchy (though its conclusions may surprise you). But how does Jeremy Paxman feel when someone else is asking the questions? Stephen Phelan finds out

PAXMAN. The name comes from the Latin, meaning "man of peace", which doesn't fit the pugilistic image of its best-known living bearer. Neither did it suit him to discover, as a recent subject of the BBC's genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? , that this moniker was contrived by a distant ancestor, a politician called Roger Packsman, who replaced two prosaic Anglo-Saxon letters with that magic "x" to enhance his appeal among the 14th century electorate. As a proper noun it must now have power independent of its meaning. Why else would the author's name appear on the cover of his new book, in purple block capitals, even bigger than the title? The spine reads simply: PAXMAN On Royalty.

"Does it really?" asks Jeremy Paxman, as if this is news to him. Having invited me to "fire away with your indiscreet questions, as the King of Albania said" (the King in question, descended from a ruling warlord called Zog, actually said this to Paxman himself during an interview for the book), my first is whether he had anything to do with the jacket design of On Royalty. "I had nothing to do with it, no, " says the 56-year-old. "I assume the publishers know what they're doing. I can't draw or anything like that. Ha ha!" It's quiet in the mostly empty tearoom of London's Langham hotel, so Paxman's laugh, which doesn't usually break out from the thin smiles he allows himself on Newsnight and University Challenge, sounds like a shotgun going off in snowy woods. This, despite my involuntary flinch, makes him suddenly seem nice, for lack of a better word.

Maybe he's not feeling adversarial. But did he not at least approve that bold, authoritative cover, which appears to announce him as more important than his subject?

"No, I didn't. Somebody remarked on this the other day. Is my name really bigger than the title? I hadn't noticed. I should have paid closer attention I suppose, ha ha." Either Paxman is attempting to disguise the selfregard that he is often accused of, or he is exactly as he seems a professional journalist slightly mortified by the suggestion that he thinks himself anything special.

There is no point in giving Paxman the benefit of the doubt, because he doesn't want it. Some of his fellows have seized on the thesis of On Royalty that monarchy in the UK, undemocratic, illogical and archaic as it is, ought to be preserved as an embarrassing ideological turnabout by a former republican. It is, in Paxman's defence, possible to read his argument as essentially negative.

He repeatedly writes that nobody "devising a system of government for the 21st century would come up with what we have now", but also describes the royal family as so steadily and rightfully stripped of worldly power that replacing them as heads of state would involve unnecessary "bother".

"Ah, " says Paxman, "but that is not the extent of my view. There are also many positive benefits of having a monarchy.

[Historian and former Marxist] Eric Hobsbawm pointed out to me that the more stable societies in Europe are monarchies. One is bound to ask if this is a coincidence, and I don't think it is. Whatever we may think about them as individuals, embodying the nation in a human being, with human frailties, is a much more benign and comprehensible system than wrapping it in flags and anthems. And there is a great deal to be said for keeping the personification of the people out of the hands of politicians, whose electioneering slogans are based on propositions which they may or may not believe." The gist of this is that Paxman has indeed changed his mind.

He used to have what he calls a "vague disdain for people who put their trust in princes and kings". Now, after thinking, and asking, and writing about it, he doesn't. "On the whole, " he says, "I don't see anything wrong with changing your mind." So this is something he would be prepared to accept from a politician on Newsnight?

"Yes, of course I would. I remember interviewing Jack Straw on prisons policy when he was home secretary. I said 'hang on, when you were in opposition you said this, and now you're doing that'. And he said 'yes, I've changed my mind'. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as it's not opportunistic.

Refusing to change your mind is a sign you've gone to sleep, you've ossified. We should always be constantly rethinking things, re-evaluating things. Engaging with things." Paxman is blessed, he says, with "an ever-present sense of perspective". This was probably sharpened by his early fieldwork for the BBC, sending investigative dispatches from 1970s Belfast and 1980s El Salvador.

Whenever tables are turned on him these days, as they were after last year's general election, when he was compelled to answer accusations that the pitiless scepticism of his questioning contributes to the degrading of national politics, he will wearily concede that certain critics "may well be right".