Dundee actor Brian Cox has blasted Jeremy Paxman after the broadcaster accused him of criticising the UK while living in America.
The actor hit out when Paxman described him as a “foreign domiciled” person who was telling everyone what was wrong with his homeland.
Cox, 74, told the presenter he was being “idiotic” for thinking he was living in the lap of luxury in the US and said he had to move there for work.
The Dundee-born Succession star also insisted he spent a large amount of time at his home in London and had every right to comment on UK politics.
The tense exchange happened when Cox appeared on the former Newsnight host’s new podcast The Lock In.
After Cox told of his dislike for Boris Johnson and bemoaned the state of education and the NHS, Paxman asked him: “Isn’t it a bit much listening to a foreign domiciled person like yourself sitting there in the United States talking about what’s wrong with this country?”
Cox replied: “Well I’m not a foreign domiciled person. I live between here and the UK, I do spend a lot of time there.
“You’ve got this idea and it’s such a stupid idea, it’s such an idiotic idea, it really is, that we live in a certain kind of way.
“It’s pie in the sky time, get real, man.
“I don’t live in the lap of luxury, it’s mythology. I like my job and I will go anywhere that facilitates my job.
“It so happened I came here. I don’t particularly like this country but I have two boys who go to school here, so I need to be here for them.
“I really don’t want to put the idea out there that I live in some lap of luxury because I absolutely do not.
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“It’s outmoded thinking if I may say so Jeremy.”
Cox, a supporter of the SNP who recently called for a second independence referendum, added: “The other thing that galls me is I absolutely love England.
“I am not a hater of England but I find it difficult to live there 24/7 because I can’t bear these idiots like Johnson and his team who drive me crazy.”
Paxman, 70, also irked Cox, who plays media magnate Logan Roy in Succession, by saying “in the end an actor’s life is just reciting someone else’s lines”.
Cox said: “Well it’s a bit more than that Jeremy.
“You have got to inhabit the lines, you’ve got to be able to give it a life.
“It’s not just learning the lines, it’s also giving it something else which is the life behind the lines, that’s part of the job.”
