
Former government ministers treated with rudeness by Jeremy Paxman need not read far into his memoir to discover why the presenter had such an urge to humiliate those in authority. As early as page six he recounts how his father, a former Naval officer, 'was accustomed to chains of command, and the merest suggestion of insubordination would send him into a fury, during which he'd grab the nearest hard object with which to beat whoever had provoked him. I was thrashed with sticks, shoes, cricket stumps, cricket bats or the flat of his hand.'