BBC Newsnight team to be sent a working fridge, courtesy of the RSC

The Royal Society of Chemistry is arranging for a fridge to be supplied to BBC Newsnight.

When, on Tuesday evening, a fridge with a small internal freezer compartment ruined a live RSC experiment under the eye of presenter Jeremy Paxman, he got very chilly.

Summarising the experiment as "a complete shambles", he asked if the BBC team had switched the fridge on, after being presented by a programme colleague with two dishes of water from the fridge, neither of them frozen.

The video of the failed experiment and Mr Paxman's frigid response has been on the BBC website's 'most-watched' list since yesterday afternoon.

A spokesperson for the RSC said today: "Mr Paxman had been very courteous and complimentary about the RSC initiating an international competition on The Mpemba Effect, which had a phenomenal response around the world.

"This effect, unexplained for 2,300 years since Aristotle first noticed it, means that hot water sometimes freezes faster than cold water. It's an amazing mystery.

"Mr Paxman was so interested in the possible results of the experiment but the BBC fridge wasn't up to the job. 

"So we thought that we would try to ease his disappointment with the gift of a working fridge so that he can try it out himself. We will stock it with food and drink and we'll throw in another great product of chemistry  - some headache tablets for Newsnight staff."

If anybody has a fridge-freezer that they would like to donate to Newsnight they can contact us via the RSC Facebook page.