From: Jeremy Paxman
Sent: 31 January 2005 15:00
To: John Doe
Subject: RE:

Bloody hell. If any of this came out, he’d be toast.

—–Original Message—–
From: John Doe
Sent: 28 January 2005 08:39
To: Jeremy Paxman
Subject: RE:

He certainly is. Here’s the subbed down version of the strangling
story, which I hasten to add I got at second hand and did not
witness personally:

The Nine, with Thompson editing, were leading with the death of
some famous British actor like Gielgud or Ralph Richardson. At
two minutes to nine a picture editor dubbed the obit to get a
perfect sound balance. As it was four minutes long and this was
the pre-digital age, this wasn’t very bright, and the story
missed its slot as the lead. After the Nine was over Thompson
stormed down to VTs in search of the culprit and tried to
throttle him. He had both hands round the man’s throat and had to
be dragged off. All this might have been forgotten but for the
fact that the picture editor, according to the story, had a
nervous breakdown, left the BBC and never worked again. They
still talk about it in RCR.

So I got off lightly really.

—–Original Message—–
From: Jeremy Paxman
Sent: 24 January 2005 14:37
To: John Doe
Subject: RE:

Gosh! I wish I’d got this earlier, although it would have been
hard to know precisely how to play it, I think. The bloke is
quite clearly insane.

—–Original Message—–
From: John Doe
Sent: 23 January 2005 08:50
To: Jeremy Paxman
Subject: RE:

Sorry I didn’t reply in time, I’ve been away from the office for
the last week, and I missed the News Festival or I could have
offered this from the audience!

It is absolutely true. It was late summer or early autumn of
1988, when he was the newly appointed editor of the Nine O’Clock
News, and I was a Home News Organiser. It was 9.15 in the
morning, in the middle of the old sixth floor newsroom. I went up
to his desk to talk about some story after the 9.00 meeting we
used to have then. I was standing next to him on his right, and
he was sitting reading his horoscope in the Daily Star (I always
remember that detail). Before I could say a word he suddenly
turned, snarled, and sank his teeth into my left upper arm
(leaving marks through the shirt, but not drawing blood). It
hurt. I pulled my arm out of his jaws, like a stick out of the
jaws of a labrador. The key thing is, we didn’t have a row first,
or even speak, and I had never had any dispute with him before.
He was recently arrived in the newsroom, and I hardly knew him.
He just bit me in the arm for no reason without any warning or
preamble. I don’t think it was personal. Something turned in his
brain, and anyone who had been standing there at that moment
would have been bitten, Linda from the teabar, the BBC Chairman,
Keith Graves, anyone. It just happened to be me.

Thompson didn’t apologise or explain, so I went to complain to my
then boss, ***** ******. All ****** said was “This whole place is
full of fucking headbangers”, which was a fair point and indeed
is still true, but didn’t help somehow. I wanted to bring the
whole BBC disciplinary process down on Thompson’s head, and get
the NUJ involved, but ****** was desperate for that not to
happen. So I got sent abroad on some story for a month or so, and
when I came back it had lost momentum, and I never pursued it.
Also I was on attachment and applying for a permanent job, so I
didn’t want to rock the boat. And in those days dinosaurs ruled
the earth, and it seemed quite acceptable for senior people to
bite junior colleagues. But several times since Mark *******, who
was one of many witnesses, has said to me “You could have ended
Mark Thompson’s career with a single word, and you never did.” He
sounded as though he wished I had, though I thought he was meant
to be a friend of Thompson’s.

Thompson stayed in the newsroom for several months until he
became Editor of Panorama, and we have met a number of times
since then. But in a very British way, neither of us has ever
mentioned it. But when he became DG several people who were in
the newsroom at the time reminded me of this incident (as if I
might have forgotten it) and it went all round the building. To
my knowledge the only time it’s appeared in print was shortly
afterwards, when a brief item appeared in the Londoner’s Diary in
the Evening Standard. This was nothing whatever to do with me,
though I was not sorry to see it. My name wasn’t mentioned, which
was good. But the story did go round the world, and when I was in
Kuwait just after the end of the Gulf War in 1991, an NBC
producer said “Are you the person Mark Thompson bit?” Fame of a
sort.

Now Thompson is DG, the story is probably more valuable. The joke
in the newsroom is that if ever they make me redundant, I’ll be
off to the Daily Mail or the Sun with my arm in a sling. There
are several other good Thompson stories. I know two more. He has
a bit of a reputation for mindless violence against innocent
bystanders (ask the old hands in RCR about the strangling
incident). But he’s only attacked me once.

I last saw Thompson just after he was made DG, at the BBC News
50th anniversary party in TC1 in May. He saw me across the room
and went white. I don’t know why. He shouldn’t be afraid of me, I
don’t bite.

John

—–Original Message—–
From: Jeremy Paxman
Sent: 18 January 2005 15:50
To: John Doe
Subject:

I’ve got to interview Mark Thompson tomorrow. Is it true that he
once bit you?