NewsColony

NewsColony Jeremy Paxman fears the elderly are treated with ‘contempt’ in the UK He’s still a regular on TV and one of the most high profile figures in Britain.  But as he prepares to turn 70 next month, Jeremy Paxman has warned that the elderly are being discarded by society and is urging the country to ‘rework’ how it talks about ageing.  The University Challenge host said we no longer treat the elderly with respect but instead with ‘contempt’.  The 69-year-old’s comments come as he opened up about his own increasing frailty and detailed a fall he had in which he ‘cracked a couple of ribs’.  Jeremy Paxman is best known as the host of BBC Newsnight and University Challenge Writing in his column for over-50s magazine Saga, Paxman said: ‘I have always found something faintly risible about those octogenarians you see rushing about in wellcushioned trainers, pretending to be half their age… and acting as if death is an optional extra on the set menu of life...