Martha Kearney's Jam Recipes For Paxman

There's a great interview with one of my favourite journalists, Martha Kearney, on the Guardian website, which you can read HERE. She's one of the nicest people in the lobby, but her niceness conceals a fairly hard-headed political brain. During the Conservative leadership contest she made a 15 minute film profile of David Davis for Newsnight which for several reasons we were extremely unhappy with. She reacted in a way few other journalists would have and instead of becoming defensive or aggressive went out of her way to talk it through with us. I'm not sure how anyone could ever fall out with her - which is a great strength as a journalist. This is a short excerpt from the piece...

Jeremy Paxman winds her up about that job endlessly - she will walk into the Newsnight studio and, in front of guests, he'll tweet: "Any jam recipes, Martha?" (She tells him, not in so many words, to knob off, as she did a few years ago when Paxman caused outraged by emailing blonde jokes round the Newsnight office; Kearney leaned on him until he ruefully sent a follow-up salvo of anti-men jokes. The two get along famously.)