And now your starter for ten: Just how many Romanians are living over Paxman's garage?

Today, however, Newsnight's inquisitorin-chief faces some awkward questions himself about his own employment practices.

It emerged yesterday that the millionaire presenter took on two live-in Romanian servants and gave them rooms above the garage at his luxurious Oxfordshire farmhouse.

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And he found them not through an employment agency, but by placing a free advert on a Romanian website.

Former housekeeper Daniela Savin and her fiance Robert Laslau claimed Paxman and his TV producer partner Elizabeth Clough paid them only £5 an hour - 25p less than the minimum wage - for their 40-hour week.

Legally, Paxman has done nothing wrong.

The £5.25-an-hour minimum wage is applicable only for staff who are not live-in employees.

But Miss Savin, 24, said: "Jeremy paid us the bare minimum that he needed to. We didn't have a contract, or any holiday agreed. There was nothing like that, it was just a spoken arrangement."

The young couple were given rooms above the garage at the farmhouse in the village of Stonor, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, where other staff included a gardener, a cleaner and a cook for weekend functions.

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In the BBC family history show Who Do You Think You Are?, viewers saw Paxman weep when he discovered his great-greatgreat-grandmother was a charlady who died in abject poverty.

But the aggrieved Romanian pair say they saw a different side to him.

So strongly did they feel that they decided to take their complaints to a Sunday newspaper, which splashed them over two pages yesterday.

To compound the embarrassment for Paxman, they even supplied a photograph they had taken of his underwear, presumably when it was sent for laundry, along with commentary about its alleged aged condition.

Paxman, 57, infamously complained recently about the quality of Marks & Spencer's underpants.

The presenter is paid £940,000 for Newsnight and University Challenge and tops this up with earnings from his best- selling books The English and The Political Animal.

He and his partner, who have three children - twins Jack and Victoria, ten, and Jessica, 16 - also have a series of directorships of television production firms.

Miss Savin and Mr Laslau were hired after answering an advertisement Paxman and Miss Clough had placed on Romanian website www.bestjobs.ro.

The website does not levy charges, unlike many recruitment agencies.

The advert said the family were looking for a "housekeeper/mother's help and driver", with duties to include: "Running the house, occasional school run, cooking, put the children to bed, shopping and cleaning."

The advert went on to say: "The mother and father both work in television."

Paxman collected the Romanians from the station when they arrived, but it seems that despite his efforts to get to know them, they failed to hit it off.

Miss Savin complained: "We didn't know then that he was a scary TV interviewer, but he grilled us.

"There was something in the way he was asking the questions. Sometimes he didn't even wait for us to give an answer.

"He asked us if we'd finished university. We hadn't and he was asking us if we felt bad."

Paxman was unavailable for comment yesterday.