Evan Davies is SO not Jeremy Paxman (thank God)

It’s unusual for somebody promoting his own television programme to tell you not to watch it, but that’s what Evan Davis has been doing. At least, he has asked us not to watch Newsnight during his first week as its chief presenter — the week that is now drawing to its close — because it probably wouldn’t be any good until he’d had a bit more experience. And even then it might turn out to be no good, he’s said: we probably would know by Christmas if it was a disaster. As it happens, I am writing this just before his first appearance on the late-night news programme, but I wonder whether he will have cried on air. In interviews, he has talked a lot about his crying. ‘I cry a lot. All the time,’ he told the Times. And the particular thing that made him cry most often was ‘people trying to maintain dignity in the face of adversity’.