[AFAIK]

First it was gentle but insistent prodding then increasing derision rising to a damning indictment, and Chloe Smith's ministerial career was all but over. The Treasury minister had been sent to appear on the BBC's Newsnight programme to defend a government U-turn on cutting fuel duty in 2012. She was unprepared and out of her depth and Jeremy Paxman took her to pieces.

Paxman's appeal to viewers lay in the disdain in which he appeared to hold politicians, television and the BBC itself, although he often denied he was as cynical as he was perceived. His public statements were often at odds with that position. "Watching TV is the most popular leisure activity in Britain. I find that very depressing," he once said.

Last summer, possibly with the knowledge that he was due to leave his position at Newsnight, he decided to grow a beard. It became a topic of national conversation – overshadowing the arrival of the show's new editor, Ian Katz – as did his decision to shave it off.

Paxman said he started his career making the tea at Radio Brighton. He spent the rest of his working life with the BBC, occasionally writing books.

His career has spanned a period covering the Troubles in Northern Ireland, reporting for Panorama and working as a presenter on radio, breakfast TV and the Six O'Clock News, before finding the show with which he has been most closely identified.

The interview with Smith was the most recent of his celebrated encounters. Smith nervously drank water each time she waited the next question. When she said the tax cut would be funded by underspends in government departments, Paxman said: "Is this some kind of joke?"

He later asked her if she ever woke up in the morning asking herself, "My god, what will I be told today?"

After 10 minutes of waffling from Smith, he finally said: "Do you ever think you are incompetent?" Smith ignored the question. Within a few months she had resigned from government, although she is still an MP.

Few politicians excelled in Paxman's presence. His tone was dismissive and he looked incredulous at even cogent replies to his questions. He insisted that he was sceptical not cynical.

"Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's tool kit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth," he once said.

Before Smith, Paxman's most celebrated victim was Michael Howard, the home secretary in 1997, when he asked the same question 12 times.

In 2007 Paxman delivered the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival in which he questioned the whether "the BBC itself" had a future. "I don't want to be apocalyptic, on the basis of what may turn out to be short-term problems, but I think it foolish to be too confident on that score. I guess there'll certainly be one more licence fee settlement. But can we really be certain there'll be a fourth? Or a fifth?"

He suggested the BBC would have to "justify" its existence "not by the way it broadcasts or the buildings out of which it works, but by what it broadcasts". He added: "We seem, far too often, to lose sight of this."

A different Paxman approach was direct mockery disguised by an earnest tone. He asked Tony Blair, then prime minister, if he and the US president, George W Bush, prayed together. George Galloway walked out of an interview live on air during an election count.

Paxman once introduced the weather saying: "And for tonight's weather – it's April, what do you expect?"

Even his colleagues were not immune. When Paul Mason seemed to exaggerate the scale of the Athens demonstrations he told him live on air: "Come off it Paul, it's not as if the whole of Athens was on the streets."

Politicians may breathe a sigh of relief at his departure but students might suffer in their place – Paxman will continue to present the TV show University Challenge.

What makes a broadcasting titan? In the case of Jeremy Paxman, it was six words. Or 72 words, by the time he had repeated them 12 times. Those words were “Did you threaten to over-rule him?” and Paxman tossed them at the then Home Secretary Michael Howard over and over in such subtly varying RP tones of disbelief, disapproval and disappointment it might have been a Rada masterclass.

That was in 1997 and it was only 10 years later that Paxman admitted that the battering was more an obedient response to a voice in his earpiece telling him to fill time than it was a heroic bid for truth. That’s the magic of television. And when it works like it did that night – a single question nailing all of the nation’s worst fears about MPs and their slippery, specious ways – who cares what is happening behind the scenes?

In that moment, Paxman went from being a respected journalist to a revered one. He became a surname-only broadcaster, a big beast, to borrow a favoured virile image of the BBC’s political commentators. His tenure on Newsnight is a remarkable achievement – a quarter of a century holding the establishment to tetchy, narrow-eyed account.

The hullabaloo that greeted the news of his retirement this week came as no surprise, even if, with hindsight, the news itself was not all too surprising. For a presenter whose default mode has always been brusque incredulity shading into bored impatience, of late his chairing of Newsnight had oozed ennui. There were odd occasions when he skewered his interviewees with as much enthusiasm as a Dad poking at a rainy bank holiday barbecue.

Never a fan of dropping the dead donkey, the task of delivering the show’s new quirky sign-offs seemed physically to pain him. Then there was the beard – the equivalent of those screw-you last days of school when you stop tucking your shirt in and start wearing your tie around your head. The clearest sign of demob delirium was an interview he gave a fortnight ago in which he called the BBC “smug” and said he couldn’t stand swathes of its output. It was disrespectful and arrogant of him but this is Paxman: disrespectful arrogance is his thing.

In his time, Paxman provided some of the best political interviews in television history. His bouts with Howard, Tony Blair, Nick Griffin and Conrad Black are the most replayed on YouTube, but one question – “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”, his journalistic creed, and one to savour – underpinned all his encounters.

There were also less good moments. In a dreadful interview with Dizzee Rascal, in which he called him “Mr Rascal” and asked the Bow-born rapper if he felt British, he came over like a supercilious high court judge. A turn with Russell Brand, in which he was amused rather than irritated by the comedian’s woolly call for revolution, was embarrassing. Indeed, when Paxman announced his retirement, Brand was one of the first to tweet his regret. “Paxman come back! This is not the revolution we intended.”

Former adversaries have been lining up to share their survivors’ tales. “I am privileged to have been on the receiving end of a Paxman grilling… and have always enjoyed the challenge,” said Boris Johnson. “I am so pleased that I was able to have a final ‘Paxman experience’,” said Ann Widdecombe. Even Howard has written that he “greatly regrets” Paxman’s departure. Going a round with “Paxo” was in danger of becoming something for MPs to relish, not fear; to enjoy even.

Certainly Paxman will be missed but post-Savile, post-McAlpine, this might be a necessary new dawn for Newsnight. It might even herald the end of the combat interview, a macho approach too long favoured by the BBC. There are occasions when only a bruising slanging match will do but MPs have become wise to it, making too many head-to-heads five minutes of punches, parries and blocks with little revelation in between. Perhaps now someone – Eddie Mair, maybe, who has a useful iron fist in his velvet glove – will dare to be different.

It has been reported that Paxman’s leaving was finally triggered by a ticking-off from the BBC’s Head of News, James Harding, for his criticisms of the corporation. If that is the case, one cannot blame Harding for doing his job. And one cannot blame Paxman for walking away when he was at risk of becoming the story himself.

Going a round with Paxo had risked becoming something to enjoy

I'm a Paxman fan and will miss his Newsnight interviews although I found him too be very rude at times as he was often dismissive or unnecessarily aggressive. His style isn't the most productive way to gain information and insight even if it cab be very entertaining and satisfying. Who will fill has shoes?

I'll be enjoying classic Paxman on youtube today.

Edit- Here's a good video compilation.

[Killborn]

There's a nobility to this smug son of a bitch's demeanor. I like how he can belittle guests without freaking out like Oreilly or Pierce Morgan. I'd actually start watching the news again if people like him got a hour or two to air our collective disgust.

[Rei Murasame]

I'm sad to see him go as well, Jeremy Paxman really was amazing.

But I must say:

NEWSNIGHT: Japanese and Chinese ambassadors on island dispute
[youtube]sbLaPRh71Tc[/youtube]

Keiichi Hayashi is possibly one of a very small number of politicians who have ever been able to slip past Paxman without getting beaten with a stick. As you can see there, Liu Xiaoming's derrière is significantly less fortunate.