Private Eye - RationalWiki Private Eye If you were looking for one of these, you're in the wrong place You gotta spin it to win it Private Eye is a fortnightly UK satirical magazine. [1] It was founded at the time of the London satire boom in the 1960s and burst into the mainstream when a special edition covering the Profumo affair was commissioned by Richard Ingrams. Initially it was 90% humour, but under the editorship of Ingrams it rapidly became known for its anti-establishment views. Although it is widely viewed as left-wing , it has always maintained a pugnacious neutrality, revealing peoples' shortcomings regardless of their political slant. The proprietor was once comedian Peter Cook . Private Eye is currently edited by Ian Hislop, who is also known for his role in BBC television's long-running satirical news quiz Have I Got News For You, which has made him the most sued person in British legal history. [2] It is very good on politics and the media, but rather less so on anything relating to science.

It disgraced itself quite thoroughly by pushing the MMR vaccine hysteria well beyond all reason, apparently on the assumption that scientific disagreement is equivalent to political coverup for self-aggrandisement. At least they don't sell their MMR Special any more. Contents [ edit ] MMR quackery Due to their desire to unearth any perceived government wrongdoing, coupled with a lack of scientific rigour, Private Eye spent most of the 2000s pushing Andrew Wakefield 's line on the MMR vaccine as absolutely hard as they could. They quieted down towards the end of the decade and, when Wakefield was finally struck off, went so far as to publish letters calling attention to the fact and asking the magazine to, you know, actually apologise in some noticeable manner. Their response was utterly pissweak. [3] In February 2010, Hislop commissioned a report into the Eye's coverage from their medical writer, "M.D." (Phil Hammond). It concluded that although the magazine was right to cover the scare when it first broke, it was far too blinkered when it came to accepting that there was no truth in the story. [4] So that's all right, then, they've cleared themselves.

Searching their website for "MMR" produces no results, although this is probably a case of their website's search engine being terrible; a search for either ATOS or Crapita produces nothing, and a search for Capita produces three hits—all of which refer to Capital. [ edit ] Political satire Beginning with "Mrs Wilson's Diary" (after the wife of Prime Minister Harold) the Eye has usually run a spoof column containing the alleged ramblings of the British PM of the time (or close associate), including: "Dear Bill" (purporting to be letters from Margaret Thatcher 's husband Dennis to conservative journalist William F. Deedes), the "St. Albion's Parish News" (the magazine of "vicar" Tony Blair 's parish [5] ), a series of "Prime Ministerial Decrees From the Desk of the Supreme Leader" complete with a faux-Soviet seal showing Gordon Brown in a military cap, [6] Dave and Nick as head and deputy headmaster of the New Coalition Academy (formerly Brown's comprehensive), The Cameron Free School with Dave as "sole headmaster", and now "St Theresa's Independent state GRAMMAR SCHOOL for Girls (and Boys).

[ edit ] Regular sections Private Eye has provided several forums for stories which are not covered by the mainstream media as they rely on unattributed sources. This has led to more than a few libel cases. [ edit ] HP sauce The dubious goings-on and hypocrisy in central government with information from anonymous inside sources. ( HP Sauce is a British table condiment which introduced generations of anglophones to the beauty of the French language: Cette sauce de haute qualité est un mélange de fruits orientaux, d’épices et de vinaigre.... The bottle carries a picture of the Houses of Parliament) [ edit ] Street of Shame The dubious goings-on and hypocrisy in the newspaper industry (which was formerly based in Fleet Street) from anonymous inside sources. Satire: the four magazines that changed everything | European CEO Satire: the four magazines that changed everything Tweet Satirical publications such as Private Eve and Charlie Hebdo have been vital in uncovering scandal and promoting freedom of speech Challenging authority and keeping the powerful on their toes is a vital part of any just society, and a right that many have fought to uphold.

Throughout history, satirical publications have poked fun at those in command Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of modern democracy, and journalism in particular acts as a means of conveying challenging views to the wider public. Sometimes, in order to tackle subjects deemed off-limits, satire is employed as a way of challenging the powerful. Indeed, satire has gone hand-in-hand with journalism over the last few centuries as a way of holding the rich, the powerful, and the corrupt to account. The press has carried satirical cartoons as a light-hearted way of raising serious points, frequently skewering serious figures with a joke. Nowadays, almost every newspaper in the world carries a cartoon featuring a prominent story of the day. Sometimes, these can be hugely controversial, occasionally in a way that oversteps the mark, but often they tell the truth in a manner that a typical piece of editorial would struggle to. Perhaps the first example of a classic satirical cartoonist is English painter William Hogarth, whose work in the early 18th century frequently lampooned British politics and political figures. The field developed around the end of that century, with British and French artists taking turns to mock each other and their own leaders as a means of highlighting the major issues of the day.

By the 19th century, satirical magazines started to spring up, solely catering for such work. Modern examples include acclaimed British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, perhaps most famous for his work with rock band Pink Floyd on their album The Wall. His work, however, has mostly been found in publications such as The Sunday Times and The New Yorker, where he has mocked and derided political figures throughout the world to devastating effect. Even popular US television cartoons like South Park and The Simpsons frequently satirise popular news and culture. The country has also led the way in recent years, with nightly satirical news shows like The Daily Show, hosted expertly by Jon Stewart for 17 years. His departure later this year will cause a huge sigh of relief from politicians and the media alike – there can be no finer praise for a satirist. Such has been the effectiveness of satire, politicians have been felled, monarchs ousted, and the credibility of the ruling classes shattered. Satire has kept the public informed – and amused – amid the many serious voices in the news. In recognition of this heritage, European CEO looks at some of the most influential magazines that have mocked and caricatured history’s most powerful figures.

Private Eye The UK’s foremost satirical magazine, Private Eye has been mocking the great and the good of the British establishment since its launch in 1961. Founded initially by Peter Usborne, Andrew Osmon, Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton and Christopher Booker – a group of school and university friends – the magazine came to prominence at a time when satire itself was really taking off in the UK. Funding came from hugely popular comic Peter Cook, who would go on to act as the magazine’s benefactor and occasional contributor until his death in 1995. Other notable contributors have included Auberon Waugh, Gerald Scarfe, Craig Brown and Claud Cockburn. While it is widely known for its humorous cartoons and lampooning of politicians, the magazine is also one of the most fearless sources of investigative journalism in the country. It has become famed for publishing stories more mainstream publications would deem too risky, with journalists at many of those publications choosing to write anonymously for Private Eye on the side. Paul Foot, whose campaigns uncovered many scandals throughout British society, initially led the magazine’s charge in investigative journalism.

He oversaw such revelations as the Profumo scandal that engulfed Harold Macmillan’s government in 1963, and the resignation of Home Secretary Reginald Maudling in 1972 over links to corrupt property developer John Poulson. Foot’s death in 2004 led to the magazine launching its Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism. More recently, the magazine led the campaign against superinjunctions that allow prominent figures to silence the media with pre-emptive legal action. Private Eye has also made a habit of mocking the rich, famous and powerful. Billionaire tycoon Sir James Goldsmith was dubbed ‘Sir Jammy Fishpaste’, leading him to sue the magazine for libel on three separate occasions. Robert Maxwell (called ‘Captain Bob’) famously sued Private Eye over allegations he had paid for a peerage, eventually winning £225,000. He would later be discovered to have conducted large-scale fraud with money from his businesses’ pension funds. Countless times, the editors of Private Eye (Ingrams from its launch until 1986 and Ian Hislop ever since) have been hauled before the British libel courts or threatened with extremely costly litigation by expensive lawyers.

And yet, the magazine has continued to challenge the established order and hold the powerful to account. Charlie Hebdo The magazine that has been in the news the most during the beginning of this year, for sadly tragic reasons, France’s Charlie Hebdo has been the scourge of the country’s political establishment ever since it was launched in Paris in 1970. It emerged after a previous magazine, Hara-Kiri, set up by humourist Georges Bernier and editor François Cavanna, was banned for mocking the death of former French President Charles de Gaulle in 1970. Running initially for 11 years until 1981, Charlie Hebdo closed before being re-launched in 1992. It has courted controversy throughout its existence, mostly attacking the far right, and in particular the French nationalist National Front party, founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen and latterly run by his daughter Marine Le Pen. The magazine has also not pulled any punches in dealing with religion, with the Catholic Church, Judaism and Islam all coming under scrutiny from its cartoonists and writers.

Many of the magazine’s most notorious cartoons have riled sections of the Muslim community, with its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad carrying a bomb in 2007 causing the Grand Mosque of Paris to sue Chief Editor Philipe Val. However, in comparison to this one suit from a Muslim body, the magazine has been sued 13 times by Catholic organisations, mainly due to front covers mocking the Pope. In 2008, cartoonist Maurice Sinet published a cartoon in the magazine mockingly claiming Jean Sarkozy (son of then-President Nicolas Sarkozy) was going to convert to Judaism in order to marry Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, a Jewish heiress. The resulting furore led to Sinet being fired from Charlie Hebdo after he refused Val’s demand for an apology letter. In 2011, the magazine’s offices were fire-bombed and its website hacked after it carried a cover with a picture of the Prophet Muhammad saying “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter!” In spite of further threats, the magazine continued to publish the image in subsequent issues. At the beginning of this year, that defiance was tragically met with an attack by two gunmen who murdered 12 members of staff.

These included cartoonists Charb, Cab, Honoré, Tognous and Wolinski, economist Bernard Maris, and editors Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad. The attack was condemned throughout French society, the Muslim community and the wider world. Large swathes of society came out in support of the magazine, including those who felt the initial cartoons were inflammatory and in poor taste. In the aftermath, Charlie Hebdo continued in its traditional vein by publishing another issue with the Prophet on the cover, this time with the slogan “Je Suis Charlie”. It achieved record sales of 2.2 million; somewhat more than the usual 60,000. Punch One of the oldest satirical publications in the world, Punch was founded at the height of the British Empire and at a time when the country dominated global affairs. Created by journalist, playwright and reformer Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells in 1841, it was also commonly known as The London Charivari, as a tribute to French satirical magazine Le Charivari. The magazine pioneered the idea of cartoons as a humorous form of art.

Its masthead included the glove puppet Mr Punch, from the Punch and Judy puppet show, symbolising its intent to cause havoc and poke fun at the world around it. Its cartoons would frequently mock the leading political figures of the day, particularly William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli during the 19th century. Many of its cartoons were particularly scathing and had serious points, however. It frequently pointed out the high cost of maintaining the royal family, highlighting that Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert received an annual allowance of £30,000 at a time when the entire education budget was a third of that figure. Such was the influence of Punch, Winston Churchill himself cited the magazine as having taught him history while at school, describing it as “food for grown-up children” in his 1932 book Thoughts and Adventures. Punch continued throughout the 20th century, satirising the bigger news stories of the day and branching out to target not only British figures. Key issues included sugar rationing during the First World War, and Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War.

Queen Victoria’s grandson and last German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II tried to get the magazine banned after it frequently belittled him and depicted him as a spoilt brat. He said that, during the First World War, the magazine had demoralised much of German society with its jibes. The magazine also carried the work of some of the greatest writers of the day. Notable contributors included Winnie-the-Pooh author AA Milne, poet Sylvia Plath, humourist PG Wodehouse, novelist Kingsley Amis and poet John Betjeman. Published weekly from 1841, Punch initially closed in 1992 before being re-launched in 1996 by Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, who some thought intended to use it to derail Private Eye, which often mocked him. It finally ceased publication in 2002, having left an unmatched legacy. Simplicissimus Despite the myth in the UK that Germans lack a sense of humour, the country has had a number of satirical publications. Perhaps the most influential of these was the weekly magazine Simplicissimus, which ran for the majority of the first half of the last century.

Launched by publisher Albert Langen in 1896, the magazine took its name from the 1668 novel Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch by German writer Hans von Grimmelshausen. The style of the magazine was modern for its time, and it featured political content that was considered particularly risky in Germany. In what was then a very traditional and conservative country, the magazine epitomised the more liberal and rebellious nature of Munich, the city in which it was published. Aiming particularly at the pompous and stiff Prussian army leadership, as well as German society’s rigid social class structure, the magazine carried a number of cartoons that derided the likes of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Among its contributors were novelist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Nobel Prize-winning poet Hermann Hesse, novelist Heinrich Mann, and acclaimed author of The Golem, Gustav Meyrink. The apparently humourless Kaiser Wilhelm managed to get the magazine banned in 1898, after numerous issues that ridiculed him.

While unsuccessful in doing the same to Punch, his efforts at home resulted in Simplicissimus’ founder Langen fleeing to Switzerland in exile and being fined 30,000 German marks. The magazine’s cartoonist, Thomas Theodor Heine, was jailed for six months, while writer Frank Wedekind was imprisoned for seven months. In 1906, the magazine saw its editor, Ludwig Thoma, imprisoned for six months for mocking the Church. In the aftermath of the First World War and the years preceding the Second World War, Simplicissimus railed against extremist politics at both ends of the spectrum. The Nazi Party was particularly vociferous in its attacks on the magazine and issued a number of threats to the editors and artists. During the war, however, the magazine declined in popularity, and it ceased publication in 1944, following Jewish editor Heine’s resignation and exile. Briefly revived in 1954, the magazine finally closed in 1967.

Previous article Ian Hislop: satirist in chief | Media | The Guardian Ian Hislop Ian Hislop: satirist in chief He's been called the most influential voice in British politics, the Dalai Lama of satire, a fogey, a moralist, a troublemaker and a cynic. Meet Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye Ian Hislop: 'It's very flattering to be told you are powerful, important and malign.' Photograph: Kalpesh Lathigra for the Guardian Friday 23 September 2011 17.59 EDT First published on Friday 23 September 2011 17.59 EDT Share on Messenger Close Ian Hislop bustles. There's no other word for it. He exudes urgency and purpose. One minute the reception at Private Eye 's chaotic Soho office is quiet, and a matronly receptionist is making me a cup of coffee. The next Hislop has arrived, and the atmosphere is transformed. He has presence, even at a generous 5ft 6in and with that schoolboyish tendency to scrunch up his face when he laughs.

Dressed in a blue suit, with a pair of sunglasses poking out of his top pocket, he looks like the successful entrepreneur he is. Hislop runs the satirical magazine Private Eye, natural home of anarchists and dropouts, while looking like the head of the local Rotary club . Hislop celebrates 25 years as editor this year – he took over from Richard Ingrams at just 26. He is keen to downplay that anniversary, but is certainly not downplaying the fact that his magazine is about to mark its 50th birthday. A celebratory book by Private Eye staffer Adam Macqueen is being published, and the Victoria and Albert Museum is staging an exhibition showcasing the magazine's covers and cartoons. It is all dangerously respectable, though, as Hislop says, critics have been complaining since 1962 that Private Eye has become part of the establishment. The first thing you see as you come through the front door are photographs of the men – they are all men – who kept the magazine afloat in its early years. "We call this the wall of death," Hislop says.

Most of those photographed have, indeed, passed on, at dismally young ages – Peter Cook , Auberon Waugh , Paul Foot , John Wells , Willie Rushton . "Bons viveurs tend not to live to a very great age," Hislop says of Waugh. The ultimate bon viveur – in the couple-of-bottles-of-vodka-a-day sense – was Private Eye's proprietor, Peter Cook, who died at 57 but at his death looked a bloated 77. Private Eye remains something of a boys' club. Hislop says he employs two women journalists, but admits there aren't many women making jokes on the magazine. For this he blames the women, not the Eye. "Women either don't put themselves forward or they're not part of gangs of blokes showing off at school and university who then turn that into a living or a way of communicating. Maybe women don't have to do that." Fifty years on, men from public schools remain the heart of the joke factory, and Hislop fits squarely into the mould. His father was a civil engineer who travelled widely for work, and Hislop had a peripatetic childhood, spent in Nigeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong.

He boarded at Ardingly College , a public school in Sussex run on Christian principles, which provided a sort of surrogate family and where he was head boy. It is tempting to see him moving seamlessly from public school to another institution with strong codes, a keen respect for its past and a ready-made surrogate family – Private Eye. Cartoonist Nick Newman , the son of an RAF officer, was a couple of years ahead of Hislop at Ardingly. "We first met in the school play," Newman remembers. "It was an awful sort of 'educational' production about the Peterloo massacre. There was much sniggering in rehearsals as all these posh public schoolboys tried to be working class. Later, we did a few revues, very sub-Python. I was 16 and he 14. At that age you don't really talk to anyone in the year below, but Ian could mix with anybody. He didn't have that shyness that other people have with their elders. When his dad died, I think he grew up very fast." Hislop's father died at the age of 45, when Hislop was 12.

"Because he died young, he was a very strong force," he says. "For a long time I thought I should be a civil engineer. That seemed to be the only thing worth doing, and I chose the wrong subjects at A-level. I read all the sciences to start with, and then had to admit, 'This isn't what I want to do' and changed course." He was close to his mother, who after her husband's death made her home near the school. "It was quite selfless of her really," he says. "I had a built-in life and community, rather than having to share in the grief. My mother was a terrific force in my life. Wartime-generation woman, hadn't gone to university but should have done. Was very funny, very verbal, very clever, very witty." He has an older sister, to whom he is also close. Hislop studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he collaborated with Newman on a satirical magazine called Passing Wind. "I'd been doing it with another friend, but he'd lost interest," says Newman, "so when Ian came up he took it over.

He was more focused than I was." Hislop admits he is a workaholic, and attributes it – as with so much else – to his absent father. "He loved what he did, which was a very strong influence. For him work was an endless pleasure." His father was Scottish born and Hislop sees his own workaholism as a "Scottish genetic, Presbyterian link". Hislop and Newman were by now joined at the satirical hip, and worked together on the influential 80s satire show Spitting Image . Hislop had also started writing for Private Eye, after impressing editor Richard Ingrams when he interviewed him for Passing Wind while still at Oxford. Ingrams was only in his 40s, but had already edited Private Eye for two decades and, according to Hislop, was exhausted after a succession of bruising legal battles. In Macqueen's book, the latter years of Ingrams' editorship are painted in bleak terms, with the tone of the magazine becoming bullying and elitist, and I ask Hislop whether his predecessor, who still attends the collective joke-writing sessions, will be hurt.

"The last thing I would want to do is hurt Richard," Hislop says, "because he's an extraordinary figure in my life." Indeed, Hislop likens him to a "substitute father". One difference between Ingrams and the improbably youthful figure he chose to succeed him concerned gossip. "I thought society gossip was outdated," Hislop says. "It was just leg-over constantly. I'm often accused of being prudish, but the opposite is true. I thought endlessly recounting that people's marriages had failed didn't seem that thrilling." The Hislop alternative? "I'd always thought the thing that defined the Eye at its best was investigative journalism and jokes, and I suppose what I've put in place of society gossip is professional gossip – people talking about how their industries, businesses, professions work, rather than saying the Duke of Cumberland was seen in White's with someone who wasn't the Duchess of Cumberland." The principal purveyor of that old-style gossip on the Eye was Nigel Dempster , and he and fellow Daily Mail journalist Peter McKay staged an attempted coup against Hislop's succession in 1986.

They took Cook, who owned most of the shares in the magazine, out to lunch, got him drunk (never difficult) and marched back to the office to confront Hislop. Instead of firing him, Cook said, "Welcome aboard." "If Richard had appointed Christine Keeler, I might have intervened," Cook said later, "but Ian was the ideal choice." Hislop praises Cook for his support in those early battles and for his comic genius, but wonders whether he could in turn have helped save him from the bottle. "He did a brilliant last show with Clive Anderson, and I got a pang of guilt then because I thought what Clive had done is not indulge Peter. I thought, 'Had we indulged Peter because he was so naturally funny?' I had ended up working for and with one of my heroes, so it was quite difficult to say, 'You know, I don't think you should drink so much.'" Unlike Cook and many of the first-generation Eye stalwarts, Hislop is no hell-raiser.

"Every 10 years he gets a bit drunk in the evening and wakes up with his contact lenses in," says Francis Wheen , one of the first people Hislop signed up when he became editor and now his de facto deputy. "He lives a quiet life down in Kent." Hislop is married to novelist Victoria Hislop, whom he met at Oxford. Her success came in her mid-40s, when in 2005 The Island became a bestseller. "I'm now plus one," he says when I ask how her celebrity has affected their relationship. "I go to literary festivals and hang about while she talks." They live in Sissinghurst, and have two university-age children, Emily and William. Although Hislop was a keen student performer, and took a revue show to Edinburgh with Imogen Stubbs , he is not, says Wheen, "a great one for showbusiness". He is good friends with John Sessions and Harry Enfield from their time working together on Spitting Image but, Wheen says, "he does like to keep parts of his life separate from others.

At his 50th birthday last year, this coach turned up and someone said, 'I'd now like to make a speech on behalf of the Kent friends.' " Wheen does not record any speeches by Hislop's enemies, though there are enough of them to fill several coaches. He has had a decade-long feud with Piers Morgan , prompted by Eye revelations over alleged insider trading as well as stories about Morgan's private life. Morgan was so furious, he sent a team of reporters from the Daily Mirror, which he then edited, to dig for dirt on Hislop. "They managed to find out that I'd once got drunk at university," Hislop says. "He devoted amazing resources to putting people on my door, sending people down to the village, contacting people I'd been at school with." They even got in touch with the vicar of the Hislops' church to ask whether his congregant had confessed to anything distasteful, not realising he was an Anglican and didn't take confession. A complicating factor was that their sons were in the same class at a prep school in south London for a couple of years.

"The two of them were having this huge fight and then having to bump into each other at parents' evenings," Newman recalls. If you're editor of Private Eye, it may be imperative that you have a stainless private life. "I like to imagine that when he was about one year old, a search went out around the country – like the search for the Dalai Lama ," Wheen says. "Where is this boy who is so pure and spotless that he can edit Private Eye and not be accused of hypocrisy? It's amusing to me that he and Rowan Williams seem to get on tremendously well, but I can see why. In his quiet way, he's a vicar manqué. He gets fanmail from bishops." Which is not to say that Hislop is a saint. "He can shout and go red in the face," Wheen says. A section of Macqueen's book is devoted to the editor's furious memos, handwritten on pink paper. Hislop's most recent spat has been with Andrew Marr over the injunction Marr had taken out to block any discussion of an affair he had had.

"There were lots of injunctions taken out by footballers," Hislop explains, "but the one that mattered was Marr's, because he had been asking Gordon Brown about his pharmaceutical usages and interviewing Blunkett about his baby." He labelled Marr's behaviour "stinking hypocrisy". "He knew he was wrong," Hislop says, "and he admitted it in the end." The pursuit of Marr added to the perception of Hislop as a moralist. Macqueen plays up that view, and finds the tenor of his Eye different from that of Ingrams. Hislop is sceptical. "It would be difficult to be more overtly moral than Richard. He has very strong views about morality, and was very insistent on them in terms of marriage and homosexuality in a way that I don't think I am. People say I'm judgmental, but all journalism is judgmental. Vice, folly and humbug – it is the point of satire really. Marr is a very good journalist, and he should know better." What about Angus Deayton , the presenter of Have I Got News For You, who was sacked in 2002 after tabloid revelations about his private life?

Deayton blamed Hislop and Merton for ousting him. Wasn't that unduly moralistic, given most viewers of the programme wanted Deayton to stay? "The moment for me was when Christine Hamilton came on the programme," Hislop recalls. "Angus introduced her as, 'The wife of the disgraced Neil Hamilton' and she said, 'If he's disgraced, what are you?' At that moment I thought, 'Your role is unsustainable here.' I said, 'You may not need the entire moral high ground, but you need a couple of inches' and he didn't have it any more. I felt either the show went or he went." A recent column by Martin Kettle in the Guardian described Hislop as "the single most influential voice in British politics". But Kettle did not intend it as a compliment. He blamed Hislop for public cynicism towards politicians, arguing that "even satirists are citizens, too. They surely have to at least consider whether what they do is harmful as well as enjoyable." How does Hislop plead? "It's very flattering to be told you are powerful, important and malign, but it's an old argument.

All satirists have been told, 'You're making the job of government impossible' when all we are really doing is trying to keep them honest. Of course their job is difficult, but it's better to say that these things are going on than say, 'This is a tough job, give them a break.' That leads to Italy or Greece." He insists he doesn't condemn all politicians. "We have politicians to lunch, we talk to them, they give us stories, if they lead a campaign we support, we give them credit. But this is not the time – so soon after the expenses scandal – for satirists and journalists to leave them alone. I don't think the public would thank us for that." I ask Hislop if he is a good hater. It is one of the few questions that makes him pause. "I don't recognise that," he says eventually, before contradicting himself by pointing to his pet hates. "I did hate Maxwell, and there are various people I get obsessed by. I got obsessed by Brown, just watching him in the Commons exploding about News International. The sheer humbug of it. The man who had Wendi [Deng, Rupert Murdoch's wife] for a sleepover complaining about News International.

It was unbelievable. So I'm capable of that kind of focus, but then afterwards I think, 'Why are you quite so bothered by that?'" Newman defends his partner against Kettle's charge. "Ian has a reasonable and moral core. He's interested in double standards, but he doesn't put the boot in without thinking about it." "He [Hislop] kept a story out of Private Eye recently," Wheen adds, "because he thought the person it was about was a bit mentally fragile, and he didn't want to be responsible for him doing any harm to himself. But he is also very combative when it comes to taking on corporations and institutions – those who can look after themselves." While Hislop can be a formidable adversary, he is also a very good ally. "Once you're a friend of his, you're a friend for life," Newman says. "I've said things about him in the past that I probably shouldn't have, but he's very forgiving." "He's always been terrifically nice to me," Wheen agrees. "When my marriage broke up in January 1993, for example, I had quite a rough time. I was essentially homeless, living in someone's attic.

Ian was fantastically solicitous. He kept asking if there was anything he could do, offering to help financially. He's an absolute rock." At Private Eye, Hislop is a practising Anglican surrounded by atheists. He says it is a misconception to assume satirists must be radical. " Swift was a dean in the Church of England. Byron was a member of the House of Lords and never gave it up. Conservatives are suspicious of what's happening, and if you're enthusiastic about what's happening, which is the traditional, optimistic, liberal position, you're less likely to say, 'It's rubbish.'" The Anglicanism, his love of history, the documentaries he makes on railways, the first world war, the Scout movement, Victorian philanthropists are all of a piece. He has a strong sense of what constitutes ethical behaviour and the good society, and is not slow to castigate those in public life who fall short. It is not that he despises politicians that makes him so severe on them, but that he holds in such high esteem what they can be at their best.

According to Newman, with whom Hislop has written TV series, a film and radio programmes, as well as countless jokes for Private Eye, his fogeyism is reflected in his attitude to sex. "Ian's quite squeamish about it," he says. "Private Eye is full of smut, but when we wrote a film a few years ago and the script editor wanted to put in a scene where the hero walked around the house naked, Ian was very against it. He just thought, would he want his children to see that he'd written that?" Hislop's conservatism extends to the future of the media, and he does not foresee Private Eye embracing the digital future. It has a rudimentary website, but keeps its key content for the magazine, and he gives me a brief lecture on the dangerous culture of free. "What am I meant to do with the people in there?" he asks, pointing to the production department. "Are they meant to work for nothing? As a model it seems to me to be ludicrous." But won't someone eventually produce a satirical website that undermines the Eye? "Possibly, but I'm not going to try to do it in order to prevent that. I want to go on doing the same thing. Obviously.

That's my personality defect." Hislop won't tell me how much profit the Eye makes, but its circulation is well above 200,000 – higher now than at any time for almost 20 years – and it's far from lavishly produced or generously staffed, so one can assume a healthy bottom line. The downside is that it needs to keep a large contingency fund for legal losses. Even when it wins, there is always the danger of losing. Accountant John Stuart Condliffe fought a decade-long battle against the Eye in the courts, dropped the case, declared himself bankrupt and left the magazine to pick up a bill for £1m in costs. "The public imagine that when you win, you get your costs back," Hislop says, "but you don't." He shows no signs of stepping down, and unlike Ingrams has not identified a member of staff he wants to inherit the crown. Wheen says he can't imagine who would take over. "It's quite hard to find someone who can juggle cartoons with one hand and writs with the other." He wants Hislop to carry on for another 25 years. "That will probably see me out.

By then, some child as yet unborn will be taken away and raised in a monastery in the traditional way to edit the Eye." • Private Eye: The First 50 Years is published by Private Eye Productions at £25. The exhibition of covers and cartoons is at the V&A's Studio Gallery from 18 October-8 January 2012. Ian Hislop and Guardian's Alan Rusbridger appear at House of Lords' culture committee inquiry into investigative journalism. By James Robinson Published: 11 Oct 2011 Heritage: Comic, cartoonist and Private Eye founder Willie Rushton - the greatest satirist of them all - Heritage - Hampstead Highgate Express Email this article to a friend To send a link to this page you must be logged in. As a boy Willie Rushton cut his teeth drawing illustrations for the school publication. Later, in 1961, along with his childhood contemporaries, he established the satirical magazine Private Eye. Often dressed as if he was heading off on a fishing jolly, he secured a place in the nation’s heart as a brilliant, original and witty performer.

On screen, each week, alongside the late Sir David Frost, he entertained audiences in excess of 13 million on That Was The Week That Was (TW3). According to Who’s Who his recreations included, “gaining weight, losing weight and parking”. Appearing on Desert Island Discs – with what Michael Palin described as his “famous crusty colonel voice” – he admitted to being “frankly terrified” by the prospect of a plane crash, leaving him “alone on a beach with 600 plastic lunches” as company. At a literary lunch hosted by The Oldie he once quipped, “Where would we be without a sense of humour? (Very slight pause) Germany!”. But he is, perhaps, remembered most fondly for his 22 years as an irreplaceable team member on BBC Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Sitting alongside his dear friend and stand-up partner, Barry Cryer, he would have fans in stitches playing the enigmatic game of Mornington Crescent, where a plaque was installed – inside the station – as a fitting tribute in 2002.

William George [Willie] Rushton (1937–1996), cartoonist, comedian and author, was born on August 18, at 3 Wilbraham Place, Chelsea. He was the only child of John Atherton Rushton, a publisher with a penchant for cricket. Young Willie spent time training at Lord’s Cricket Ground, learning the sport which developed in to a lifelong passion. In later years he played for the Lord’s Taverners and wrote a novel, W. G. Grace’s Last Case (1984), based on a fictional episode in the life of the great cricketer. Educated at Shrewsbury School his chums included Richard Ingrams, Christopher Booker and Paul Foot. With Ingrams and Booker he produced The Wallopian, a satirical version of the school magazine, to which he contributed cartoons. Ingrams explained: “My best friend at school was Willie. We were in the same house and we were both there because our fathers had been there before us. “Willie was almost my exact contemporary, being only one day older. He was one of those rare people who didn’t appear ever to change.

The torrid period of adolescence left him unscathed, making him the ideal companion for someone like me, prone to write love poetry or harbour hopes of becoming a missionary in Africa. “Even as a 12-year-old he was a brilliant cartoonist, entirely self-taught, who when left to himself would cover every available scrap of paper with doodles – mostly fat bald middle-aged men with moustaches.” The young would-be-satirists targeted pseudo-intellectuals, and coined the term “pseuds”, which later gained common currency in Private Eye. Academically undistinguished, Rushton claimed to have failed O-level maths seven times. When confronted with a specimen in a bottle during a biology exam and asked, “What’s this?”, he answered, “Disgusting”. His theatrical talent first found an outlet at school. He recalled that when he played Lord Loam in The Admirable Crichton, “the audience wondered which elderly member of staff had been dragooned into playing Loam”. Failing Latin and unable to secure a place at Oxbridge, where his peers were headed, Rushton did his national service in the army. He failed the officer selection board and served in the ranks.

He later commented: “The army is, God bless it, one of the funniest institutions on earth and also a sort of microcosm of the world. It’s split almost perfectly into our class system. Through serving in the ranks I discovered the basic wit of my fellow man – whom basically, to tell the truth, I’d never met before.” After leaving the army Rushton worked at a solicitor’s office, occupying his time by doodling on case notes and having his cartoons rejected by Punch. He left the law firm after almost being knocked down by a bus, vowing never to waste another moment of his life on something he didn’t enjoy. The idea for a London-based satirical magazine was developed in a Chelsea pub with Ingrams and the first edition of Private Eye appeared on October 25, 1961. “Early issues were put together in Rushton’s bedroom in his mother’s house where he alone mastered the art of laying out Christopher Booker’s copy and his own cartoons.” Private Eye was well received, favourably reviewed in The Observer, and the rest is history. Rushton supplied clever content consisting of jokes, puns, double entendres and, of course, cartoons.

His creativity extended further to inventing names for memorable Eye characters, such as Lunchtime O’Booze, the archetypal hard-drinking journalist. By this time Rushton’s repertoire had extended to include hilarious songs such as Neasden (“You won’t be sorry that you breezed in... where the rissoles are deep-freezed-en”) and Fornicazione … is Italian for Love. In the same year Rushton made his professional acting debut in Spike Milligan’s The Bed-Sitting Room. Following this he joined Ingrams, John Wells and Barbara Windsor in a bizarre cabaret at the Room at the Top (of a department store) in Ilford, where he was recruited by Ned Sherrin, the producer of the ground-breaking BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was. Willie’s weekly impressions of Tory politicians were hailed “masterpieces of refined cruelty”. Sir David Frost paid tribute saying: “Willie Rushton just went on getting wittier and funnier with every passing year.” When Rushton left TW3 his talents were employed on Not Only... But Also. He collaborated with Hampstead satirist, comic genius and TW3 alumni Peter Cook. The two also worked together at Private Eye.

During the late ’60s Rushton spent much of his time in Australia, where he met his wife Dorgan, whom he married in 1968. It was on one of his return visits to the UK that he brought back the late Tony Hancock’s ashes – in an Air France bag – referring to the incident as “My session with the customs was a Hancock Half Hour in itself”. His acting career continued to flourish. He had a series of cameo roles in films, including Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965) and Monte Carlo or Bust (1969). On TV he took the parts of Plautus in Frankie Howerd’s comic foray into ancient Rome, Up Pompeii (1970) and Major Trumpington in the drama Colditz (1974). In 1974 Rushton joined the cult BBC Radio 4 “antidote to panel games”, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. The show’s formula, in which the teams of (usually) Tim Brooke Taylor, Cryer, Graeme Garden and Rushton were given “silly things” to do by the chairman, Humphrey Lyttelton.

Garden explains the origins of the eccentric game, Mornington Crescent. “One night in Gerry’s club the members adopted the game as a way of getting rid of bores,” he said. “They would all play as if it was a serious game, but if the bore joined in they would mock his moves and criticise his pathetic play until he gave up and left.” The beauty of the game lies in it being entirely incomprehensible – with unexplainable rules – or as Cryer reveals, “Just listen to the words!” Rushton always asserted, “Think as the crow flies”. In 1996 Rushton toured with Cryer in Two Old Farts in the Night, an anarchic run of one-night stands. Cryer described his friend as, “a warm sentimental man who took great pains to conceal it and left a great hole” when he died suddenly of complications whilst in hospital. Related articles

Question: Which comedian founded the satirical magazine "Private Eye"?
Answer: PETER COOK