Russell Brand doesn’t answer my emails any more says Jeremy Paxman

Jeremy Paxman has revealed that he wanted to front a political programme with Russell Brand in which they drove around the country in an ice cream van. But it was not to be.

Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Brand reflected on his famous Newsnight interview with Brand in 2013.

When it was suggested by his interviewer, journalist Emma Barnett, that he “continues to email” Brand, Paxman said: “I don’t continue to email….he doesn’t reply any more. He ran away."

“I suggested to him during the election campaign that we do a series of films in which we rented or bought an old ice cream van and went around to political rallies and getting the chimes going and giving away ice creams.”

However it appears that Brand did not respond to his queries.

“I actually quite liked Russell Brand,” he said of the encounter in 2013 (below).

Paxman said he had harboured low expectations of Brand before the Newsnight interview, as he was "a multimillionaire with a house in California talking about the need to take from the rich and give to the poor".

But he added: "There is something irresistible about him... he stands squarely in the British tradition of cheeky chappies."