Too clever ?

"I think Newsnight should be the group of clever friends you want to sit down with in the pub at the end of a long day and make sense of what is going on in the world."

I remain worried about Ian Katz. He's given an interview (and posed for pictures by Jim Laurie) to the Evening Standard, about his relationship with Paxo. Paxo told him, pretty much on arrival, that he wasn't hanging around, but Katz says he was grateful the departure wasn't instant.

He's not grateful about much else. “I’d love to know if he was less petulant in meetings before I got there. I think that’s just his modus operandi. He’s dyspeptic about pretty much everything. Ideas are flattened. Almost everything you suggest Jeremy will think is ‘preposterous’ or ‘infantile’ or an otherwise ‘completely lamentable’ idea, and that’s a challenge because you have to sell it to him.” There are viewers who will be alarmed about a future in which Katz's programme ideas meet reduced challenge. Pub conversations are not noted for their high standards of journalism.

Previous Newsnight editors have been more publicity-shy. Interviewer Charlotte Edwards says Katz seemed remarkably nervous, "his jaw pounding gum at around 100 bpm. The clothes, at least, are relaxed: open-necked shirt revealing a rugged thatch, rolled sleeves, faded black jeans and lots of tousled hair. Overall, the look is Eighties heart-throb, a sort of Jewish Patrick Swayze in his Dirty Dancing heyday."

Charlotte also reveals that 'fun' boss Ian organises lunchtime workouts of running and press-ups with male colleagues. Throbbing.