[DTV]

He presented Newsnight, too - he and Gavin Esler started at the same time (summer 1997) and between them covered for Paxman and co for pretty much the whole of that summer. I believe this was to get their presenting skills up to standard as they were both set to be regular presenters on the upcoming News 24 channel (gee, wonder what happened to that?!).

I forgot about that! Looking back at Genome, the regular presenters largely disappeared for two-and-a-half months. BBC World's Nisha Pillai also seems to have been tried out, presenting six editions at the same time. Given it was just after Peter Snow's depature, I do wonder if there was also an element of testing them out for Newsnight, as well as giving them practice for News 24?

At first, it seems a bit weird for Newsnight to give over the presenting job to relative unknowns, but Newsnight in summer has always been a bit of a free-for-all - there was one summer a few years ago when a load of summer editions were presented by LBC loudmouths like Ferrari and O'Brien.