SHE would not share a stage with him, he would not debate without her, and so it came to this: a joint but separate stuffing by Paxo. Turkeys voting for Christmas or what?
Ah, but some wondered if Jeremy Paxman was these days more butter knife than carving fork. Sure, he had once kebabed David Cameron on food banks and basted Ed Miliband as a “north London geek”, but that was two years and one General Election ago.
Now the erstwhile Ron Burgundy on steroids was facing Theresa “Vicar’s daughter/National Trust member” May, and Jeremy Corbyn, whose hobby is photographing manhole covers. The only danger here, surely, lay in Paxo being bored to death.
Before going head to head with the stuffer-in-chief, each leader had to face the studio audience. Confronted with Corbyn, they seemed quite pleasantly surprised that he did not have a forked tail. Leaning jauntily on the podium, the Labour leader looked as if he had just popped in for a cheeky red. Sinn Fein, nukes, taxes, migration: Jezza just wanted to buy the world a drink and teach it to sing in perfect harmony.
Next up, Paxman v Corbyn. The former Newsnight anchor started off at 11 on the harumph-ometer and stayed there. His line of attack was that Mr Corbyn had not been radical enough. “There’s nothing in here about getting rid of the monarchy!” puffed Paxman. “It’s not in there because we are not going to do it,” trilled Jezza, who added that some of his best friends were constitutional monarchs. Not much of a glove laid.
Better luck with Mrs May, maybe. She tried to be jaunty like Jezza, but the audience was not having it. If Nicola Sturgeon’s nightmare was a nurse, Mrs May’s was a mother of two concerned about school funding in England. And Paxman was no dream boat either. Accusing her of changing her position with the wind, whether on care costs or holding a General Election, what would they be thinking in Brussels, barked Lieutenant Paxman of the Third Armchair Generals Brigade. “She’s a blowhard who collapses at the first sign of gunfire!” he ventured. Cue laughter and applause.
Paxman, like the punters, had woken up, but time had run out. With a final thanks to the PM, the audience applauded. Someone got to his feet to cheer Mrs May. Or maybe it was Paxman he was saluting. In any case, he was alone.
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