I was a little nervous for this interview. Jeremy Paxman is probably the most formidable interviewer alive: he isn’t called ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ for nothing. I’ve seen him fell some of the biggest beasts of British politics. There was that time he suggested to Theresa May that she was seen as a “blowhard” by her European counterparts. Then of course there was the interview with Michael Howard back in 1997. Should my questions be too banal, or push a little too far, was I now under threat of being overruled in my role as interviewer? I had visions of our encounter playing out somewhat like putting a High Court barrister on trial; or offering my Director of Studies a helpful commentary on his PhD thesis.

Thankfully, before I even shake hands with the man, I’ve met his dog, Derek. He’s scurrying around at my feet for a comfortable position in the aisle. Paxman turns to a fellow passenger, with whom he had clearly been speaking before I arrived: “Yours is probably properly bred! He’s from Battersea Dogs Home.” I sit opposite him on our train departing from King’s Cross Station. We are Cambridge-bound, and I’m pleased to say I’ve avoided a Newsnight welcome.

“Most people are nice. That’s my big lesson in life. The media stereotype is absolutely wrong”

“Most people are nice. That’s my big lesson in life. The media stereotype is absolutely wrong.” Sitting behind his laptop and wearing a pair of rounded spectacles (he is just putting the finishing touches on an email to the Mail on Sunday), I can see that Paxman is unassuming and obliging to friendly admirers, myself included. He doesn’t like fame, but says, “it’s probably quite good for me – it keeps me on the straight and narrow.”

Perhaps it would be hypocritical of him to say otherwise. Paxman has made a career of keeping those in power on the “straight and narrow”. Presenter of the BBC’s flagship political programme Newsnight for 26 years, his interviews are remembered as pointed, intensely sceptical and, at times, interrogatory. “I think your job is just to ask the questions. You carry on asking the questions until you get an answer or until it's abundantly clear that there's no answer being given.”

That’s a pretty simple formula. There’s a pretty simple motivation behind it too. “I've always been curious. You only need two things to be a journalist: you need to be immensely curious about the world, and you need to love words. Both those things were true in my case, so I was lucky, I think. The whole interviews thing just happened, by chance, after I'd spent several years on the road as a reporter, basically working abroad most of the time.”

Paxman describes Belfast, from which he reported during the Troubles, as “at times fascinating, sometimes completely terrifying, and at other times hilarious.” When I push him, though, I quickly find our limits: “I don’t tell war stories. They’re just vainglorious.” At what point, then, did the BBC recognise his talents as an interviewer and pluck him out from his adventures? On this he is equally off-hand: “I didn’t know they did.”

Paxman’s first encounters with journalism began at this paper (he describes today’s editions as “very slickly-done”, in case anyone out there is interested). We first met a few weeks ago when he visited the Varsity offices to film part of a documentary on the Prince of Wales, uncovering news stories from the young Prince’s time at Cambridge. Some of Paxman’s first bylines for the paper were written at the same time. One reads, Cambridge’s ‘Sidney Street Siege’ (14th February, 1970). Another beckons elaboration: Why all the lonely people? Sex and the single student (30th May, 1970). Sadly, I don’t get much on his time at University: “you should do some homework if you're that bothered!”

Paxman has never been one to prevaricate, which is perhaps stating the obvious. It makes for some clumsy moments in our interview. When I suggest that Cambridge privileges those with top educations, I come to regret it: “when we get to the point when University is for the uneducated, it becomes rather pointless, doesn't it?” Then on the future of print journalism in a digital world: “I don't know. I'm a journalist. If you want Mystic Meg, go talk to Mystic Meg.”

Such honesty about his own views, of course, fits very well with what the public thinks of Paxman. He’s made a living observing and mediating the opinions of others, not throwing his own around. Perhaps that’s no wonder: years of experience at the forefront of politics have shown him just how fragile opinions can be. “It’s a singularly dispiriting thing to talk to some MP and for him or her to say ‘this policy is nonsense’, and then the next thing you know they’re voting for it.” Paxman would rather do away with party labels. “Look, what I would really like is a House of Commons made up of Independents. People who have made up their minds on the basis of their knowledge and thought, not a bunch of people who do as the whips tell them.”

This sense of malaise with politics is a perception Paxman’s interviews have often confirmed for viewers. Indeed, this may have been one of the reasons why the Conservatives fancied Paxman as London Mayor in 2014. He was approached many times by the party, refusing each invitation. Yet, despite being a Cambridge-educated BBC man himself, Paxman’s comments surely make him popular beyond the ‘liberal elite’. Eminently sceptical about established politicians, and adept at slicing through their political jargon – Paxman the ‘People’s Man’ would surely be a fitting campaign slogan.

He would not, of course, describe himself in those terms. What drew him to journalism in the first place, however, was a determination to break down barriers between the elite and the general public. He says he was “slightly appalled” at the culture of journalism in his early years. “There was a distinction between those who were in the know and those who weren't.” High-brow journalism was a patrician occupation, and often perceived as such. His next observation brings to mind the cosy reporters’ lounges of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop: “I think speciality is the enemy of intelligibility very often. [Journalists] can very easily be captured by the lobby or organisation or forum upon which they report. That's a bad thing because you're there really as a representative of the public.”

What little seems to have changed. Oxbridge continues to dominate established television and print media institutions; media dynasties don’t seem to be going away either, if the Dimbleby brothers, or the Snow family, are any measurement.

Indeed, Paxman’s comments come at a time of increasing strain between the public and the established media. The BBC seems to be caught in a partisan tug-of-war over Brexit which both sides claim is rigged against them. Is this a sign that it still occupies centre-ground? “If you're funded by tax, you've got to be very assiduous in trying to discharge a multiplicity of obligations to people who have a huge variety of interests.”

Diplomatic enough. But too often, argues Paxman, the BBC has sacrificed empiricism for impartiality. “They [BBC commissioners], in common with others, thought that it was enough to provide a balance to an argument. So somebody said something which was reasoned and empirically based, and they were immediately put up against someone who was just a head-banger on the other side. I think that it's understandable that you would do that, but it's a lazy way to behave.”

“I think your job is just to ask the questions. You carry on asking the questions until you get an answer or until it's abundantly clear that there's no answer being given”

While the BBC may be “cautious and very often rather lacklustre”, however, there is good reason to maintain faith in ‘mainstream’ broadcasters. On the rise of social media and ‘alternative’ news organisations, Paxman remarks that “what I do have a problem with is that they should all be accorded parity of esteem. That something that you read on a tweet or a Facebook feed or whatever... someone who is merely spouting prejudice. I don't see any reason why you should take that as seriously as you take the product of a newsroom like CNN or the BBC.”

‘Post-truth’ may have become a rather lazy aphorism for our media age, yet I do wonder what impact the fragmentation of the media industry will have on how we conduct journalism. Paxman believes in the importance of “disclosure” over narrative: “The imparting of a small number of important facts to a limited number of very busy people.” Yet he is eminently aware that the acceleration of the news cycle ensures “a lie can be right around the world before truth has got its boots on.”

Does this threaten the ‘fact-finding’ mission itself? “The problem with investigations is that – and I used to do them – when you start you don't know how long it's going to take, and you don’t know whether at the end of it you're going to get something that runs. So it demands a lot of an editor.” That can only be getting harder as commercial pressures close in, but Paxman does not seem concerned. “I think more people doing the disclosing the better. And we'll learn who to believe and who not to believe.” Those who believe our democracy was recently subverted by foreign intervention would, I imagine, beg to differ.

Critical of the timidity of news corporations and their online alternatives; situated between political establishment and the “hoi polloi”, I wouldn’t entirely blame Paxman for feeling aloof from the whole enterprise. The eye-rolling cynicism we associate with him masks, however, a ceaseless curiosity. That, I think, explains his directness, his scepticism, and his disdain for making assumptions. It certainly makes for an occasionally combative discussion: but, like fame and admirers, “it goes with the territory”.

Our train pulls in to Cambridge and I have one final question. What advice does ‘Paxo’ have for the next generation of journalists? “I would say, don’t. Don’t do it. The business has become completely casualised now and there's very little longevity in it, so I think you ought to be very careful.” It’s not the politest thing you could say to a student journalist, but then again, where did politeness get Jeremy Paxman?