.png?trim=56,0,210,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Jeremy Vine ‘sad’ about Newsnight co-star Jeremy Paxman’s health: ‘I see how he’s suffering’ – UK Times")
Jeremy Vine has said he is “sad” for his former Newsnight co-host Jeremy Paxman, who is living with Parkinson’s disease.
Vine, who worked joined Paxman on the BBC news programme between 1999 and 2002, has said he has been “meaning to” reach out to his former colleague due to his own connection to the disease after the death of his father, Guy Vine, in 2018.
“My dad died of Parkinson’s and I’ve been meaning to reach out to Jeremy because I see how he’s suffering with that illness and I’m sad for him that he’s unwell now,” Vine told The Times in a new interview. “I look back on Newsnight with nothing but good memories.”
Vine expressed admiration for Paxman, remarking on the amount of hard work he put into his Newsnight role.
“Somebody once said to me that Paxman would sometimes spend the whole day thinking up one question. For example, the German ambassador in 1989, where he said, ‘Well, it’s not been a very good century, has it?’” Vine recalled. “I realised that he operated very much like the goal scorer who is a bit inert on the pitch for 80 minutes and then scores the goal of the season.”
In May 2021, Paxman announced he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and stepped down as the host of University Challenge.
The TV star said the diagnosis came after he collapsed while walking his dog, adding that his doctor had noticed signs of the disease when he saw he was less “exuberant” and had a “Parkinson’s mask” while presenting University Challenge.
“Well, it was completely out of the blue,” Paxman said of the diagnosis. “I was having a walk in the square across the way. There was ice around and I had the dog with me – the dog was on a lead.
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“The first thing I knew was when somebody was sitting me on a bench. I’d fallen over and I made a terrible mess of my face. I’d gone straight down on my hooter, which, as you can see, is not small. Cuts all over the place. I was a real mess. And when I was in A&E, a doctor walked in and said ‘I think you’ve got Parkinson’s’.
“And it turned out that he had been watching University Challenge and had noticed that my face had acquired what’s known as the Parkinson Mask.”
“I wasn’t as effusive and exuberant as normal. I had no idea.”
Parkinson’s disease is a condition in which parts of the brain become progressively damaged over many years, according to the NHS.
The three main symptoms of the condition are involuntary shaking of particular parts of the body, known as tremors, slow movement, and stiff and inflexible muscles.
Last year, Paxman shared an insight into how the condition was affecting him, saying having the disease “makes you wish you hadn’t been born”.
“(Parkinson’s) may not kill you but it will make you wish you hadn’t been born,” he said while delivering a list of recommendations about the illness to the government.
