Casting off

'Jeremy Paxman and his partner separated last year,’ confirms his agent. ‘They retain a mutual respect for each other and a deep love for their children.’  Thus the Daily Mail this morning.

Jeremy got together with Elizabeth Clough some 35 years ago, when Jeremy was a globe-trotting reporter for Panorama. Liz, like Jeremy, had been a BBC News trainee, though was working at ITV at the time they became an item. They have three children - Jessie, now 26, and twins Jack and Vita, 19 - brought up in the family home in the Chilterns, twixt Henley and the M40.

In 2012, Jezzer dedicated his book Empire "For Elizabeth, Jessie, Jack and Vita, for whom the imperial project meant long periods of either physical or mental separation. Independence is at hand".

Elizabeth is president-elect of the Old Marlburians. She is also a non-executive board member of Wild Blue Cohort, a group of angel investors in West London. She is about to join the Independent monitoring Board for Bullingdon Prison, her local nick in Oxfordshire.

In 2005, Jeremy bought a flat in a mansion block in Kensington Park Road - portered, with lifts and private access to Ladbroke Gardens - for just under £600k, which looks like excellent value at today's prices.

Next week Channel 4 brings us the first of four "River" documentaries filmed by Paxman last summer. They cover the Tweed, the Severn, the Mersey and the Thames.