25/03/2008

The main presenter on BBC Television's Newsnight is to claim - in a documentary being broadcast this evening - that the English couldn’t care less if the Scots opt for independence.

Jeremy Paxman, who has openly and frequently criticised the Newsnight Scotland opt-out from the parent programme as being parochial, will say: “The Scots ought to snap out of this sense  that everyone down here is worried about it. They are not."

He makes his feelings known in a BBC ONE Scotland documentary, 'What Do the English Really Think of the Scots?', which goes out at 10.35pm tonight.

Paxman, who maintains that it is good sport winding up the Scots ..."because it is so easy", tells presenter, Hardeep Singh Kholi, a columnist on Scotland on Sunday: ”I think the view down here would be: ‘If our friends in Scotland decide they don’t want the Union to continue any longer, well that is a judgement for them. And if they don’t want to share the same house with us
...and  move out, that’s a bit of a shame'.

"It is like watching a marriage decay among friends. But if that’s what they want, well let them do it. We have been allowed no voice in this. This is a question that the English have not had any kind of say on, and nor will they be allowed a say.”

Coincidentally, at the weekend, the Sunday Herald carried a major feature in its media section on the life, times and thoughts of BBC Newsnight Scotland anchorman, Gordon Brewer.

And large chunks of it also appeared in a prominent news story on an early page.

* Send your Scottish media news and gossip, in the strictest confidence, to  info@allmediascotland.com