Parkinson's disease

The TV legend won't be cajoled into crying as he investigates his illness and films his final series of University Challenge – but he does give us ...

It does so with the clinical precision that you would expect and with a solid sense of humour that comes as more of a surprise. Though it is billed as a personal film, Paxman is too professional to give much away. There is a brief moment in which he gets to sit down again with Michael Howard, the recipient of his most famous grilling, to show what a bulldog he could be in his prime as a political interviewer. His old Spitting Image puppet is wheeled out at the pub, and the brief archive clips serve as a reminder of a past he is now leaving behind. He is a wonderfully unsentimental documentarian, insisting that he is not participating in the film to elicit sympathy and refusing to be cajoled into “blubbing” on camera. Paxman explains the “Parkinson’s mask”, a stiffness of facial muscles that make it harder to smile, for example, or to raise your eyebrows.

Jeremy Paxman opens up about his deteriorating health due to Parkinson's disease.

The main aim of drug therapy for Parkinson's disease is to increase the levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain, as low dopamine levels are a ...

With the presenter diagnosed after a doctor spotted his facial 'Parkinson's mask' on 'University Challenge', a look at the disease in more detail.

The broadcaster, 72, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease 18 months ago and discussed it for the first time on film in the documentary.

A documentary looking into the life of Leeds-born Jeremy Paxman after being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease is on TV tonight - here's how to watch.

MANDATORY CREDIT Livewire Pictures Limited/ITV Undated handout photo issued by ITV of Jeremy Paxman Jeremy Paxman attends an English National Ballet therapy ...

When he resolved to focus on the positives (he had a renewed appreciation for life) we were treated to The Verve’s “Lucky Man”. “I doubt it will be on either of our tombstones,” Howard said of the exchange (which curiously had nothing whatsoever to do with Paxman’s health). The problem was that he was already clear-eyed about where he stood, turning the film into an hour of box-ticking for the benefit of the viewer, rather than for Paxman himself. He also went to Manchester to interview a woman who claimed she could “smell” people with the condition. “I’m not going to blub on camera,” he said at the top of the busy and somewhat curmudgeonly documentary, Paxman: Putting Up with Parkinson’s. “I don’t want to be involved in a film that is in any way encouraging of the ‘poor little me’ syndrome.”