Private Eye: Classic Or Dud

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Consistent barb in the establishment's side, or embarassing old warhorse that's been trading on the same old jokes for years? Or - most likely - a bit of both? Do you read it? Did you use to? Is the investigative reporting still excellent? Or is it just saloon-bar gossip? Is "satire without a purpose" an aim in itself, or is it inherently conservative?

― Tom, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

As established on that other thread, I used to read it until I realised I wasn't laughing much. I think it's been an influence - almost every 16-year-old public schoolboy who wants to write at all wants to write for the Eye (and conversely it appeals to the eternal 16-year-old public schoolboy lurking inside many of its readers of whatever class). The investigative stuff is great but I started getting the impression that a lot of it was just nasty gossip (I love nasty gossip but not enough to pay money for it) and that anything important would turn up in the newspapers anyway.

― Tom, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

PE is all over the place. It isn't consistently anything. I personally find it by turns misguided, infuriating, gossipy, snipey, but I wouldn't want it any other way. (It is the only paper publication i still buy.) It's a sort of popbitch of the establishment (tho actually less irritating). It used to be the only way to find out what was happening at HarperCOllins too (though that has tailed off in the last few years for reasons obvious to those annoying people "in the know")

So CLASSIC. But then I DO like jokes being flogged to death (Did you read the St Hash Cakes column in the wake of Harry Pothead storry, hee!).

Recent DUD annoyances include their coverage of MMR.

― Alan Trewartha, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was at the hospital yesterday. waiting for the time of my appointment. 'where the heart is' was [yes] playing on a television just inside my peripheral vision [yes]. many magazines piled on a table; woman's own, ideal home and the like. and a copy of private eye. I hadn't read private eye in quite a while. I wasn't surprised to see [as tom says] the same format of jokes and reporting as always. but it amused me all the same. so much so that I wanted to steal it to read later. but didn't. I think the thing that makes it so amusing [to me] is that there does seem a distinct lack of effort. and it's similar to 'have I got news to you' in that it can still be funny when these current events its commenting on are far from current. I don't think satire requires a purpose no more.

― richard john gillanders, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I may be wrong, but wasn't Peter Cook heavily involved in PE. Until he died, obviously.

so in his memory I'd have to say: DUD.

― Calumn, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You missed out the "LEY" from your post, Calumn.

Alan's write, PE's a bit of everything really, because it expresses so many diverse opinions. The main niggle I've got is their obvious public schoolboy dislike of the beautiful game (football, NOT rugby).

When the critical tone occasionally gets sneery, I don't take it too seriously, although I can appreciate that it does irritate some. I like the way that over the years, PE has built up a rather begrudging respect, even amongst its "enemies". Is there actually an MP who DOESN'T read Private Eye these days? They can't really afford not to.

PE's critical peak for me came with the one-off special: "Lockerbie: A flight from justice" - any suspicions that the Lockerbie bomb suspects could be guilty were completely dispelled by this article. This is investigative journalism at its very best, and a damning indictment of our judicial system and brilliant expose of politics' rotten core.

The world is a better place for Private Eye, undoubtedly. Okay, so they get it wrong sometimes, but don't we all?

― Trevor, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Alan is on the button here - the Eye doesn't consistently subscribe to any ethos at all (way back in 1962 they declared "Private Eye says: balls to the lot of them", and that still applies today). The constant sneer can irritate - constantly the Eye infuriates me in all kinds of ways, the joke pages grate after a while and are *definitively* public school humour, "Square Eyes" is so consciously superior that he uses words like "decadal" and "especial" - but there is just so much in there about how British institutions work that most of the press just won't touch, and that is profoundly valuable in itself. It's certainly a much more open and welcoming place to work now than it was under Richard Ingrams, by all accounts: when Ian Hislop took over in 1986 he made a conscious effort to get younger, state-educated, especially female writers in who might have been put off by the sneery gentleman's club / public school common room atmosphere that Ingrams had set up, and he reduced Ingrams's dependence on "legover stories" (gay vicars, bishops going off with young women etc.), also getting rid of Nigel Dempster's "Grovel" column which was just full of stories about aristocracy too racy for the Daily Mail's liking, and Ingrams's nasty "Wimmin" column - Auberon Waugh had already left a few months earlier. So what Hislop did was make the Eye much less fogeyish than it was becoming in the early 80s, and beef up its investigative journalism content (which is really what I read it for). Without Hislop I think it would have become totally irrelevant by now, which makes him classic in his own right, however smug he sometimes seems on TV.

Classic: Dr B. Ching's tales from the privatised railways, which never fail to intensify my anger over how totally the Tories fucked them (and most of our other public services) up, the regular exposure of the dodgier practices of Blair and New Labour in the indispensible political pages, plus Books and Bookmen mainly because a friend of mine writes it. Dud: Gavin Stamp's extraordinarily aggressively fogeyish pseudonymous rants as "Pilote" in the Nooks and Corners column. Also I was enraged no end by "Muckspreader" calling Margaret Beckett a "creature" and accusing her of wanting to force all farmers to buy a computer: "Gumboot" writes better stuff about farming mainly because he doesn't seem to be such an inbred Tory. But that's the thing about the Eye: all opinions are there, from backwoods paranoia even the Telegraph might flinch at, to really bold and brave investigative journalism of the type that Paul Foot and his team do better than any other wing of the UK press. Whatever you say about the Eye, you can't say it doesn't live up to its self-definition: hypocrisy and humbug *from all sides* lampooned equally. And it does easily enough good to ensure that I always, always read it. Plus they were reporting that Jonathan King had underage boys driving his porsche in *1976*!

― Robin Carmody, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Do you mean the Hall & Oates song? CLASSICK, dear chum. ;-)

― helenfordsdale, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

PE's parliamentary column — which is already called URQUHART in order to spook the plebs — casually mentioned w/o contextualisation a certain Lord Lundy this issue: not a forgotten liberal peer, but a fictional character. The reference is valid, quite funny, and even — in a sort of "you can always google, fuck you" way — admirable, but it surely emphasises the mag's extreme cultural narrowness (given that they would surely NEVER use the term "google" w/o explanation, even though I bet more ppl know it).

The Footballers Wives review coincides with a bunch of long letters abt Arsenal football ground, in which PE is roundly denounced for its complete ignorance of and public- school philistinism towards football (which ps makes no sense: it's not like it's a pro- rugby cricket and rowing mag, so the philistinism isn't a public-school thing, just an anti-sport thing). The review itself I think seriously miscues a quite smart point about the prog failing to find its audience, with its assumption that all football fans by DEFINITION have a narrowly defensive, dullard's idea of how football works (ie that this prog would by DEFINITION only appeal to football-hatas).

― mark s, Saturday, 16 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(i mean "no sense" that anti-foopball = some bizarre public-school-only prejudice: since PE is associated primarily w.the school i went to, where foopball was-is the main and most touted sport, hence of course detested by "arties" like r.ingrams, w.rushton, self...)

― mark s, Saturday, 16 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"foopball" = Molesworthian speak, yes?

As it happens I saw Hislop once referred to as an "Old Salopian" (actually he went to an obscure Sussex public school called Ardingly College, of which I know nothing and not sure I care: don't want to, anyway).

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 17 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

five years pass...

i guess it's an extract from a book, but the thing about the observer under roger alton this week is fascinating.

― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, 25 January 2008 11:18 (seventeen years ago)

The LouJag-berated musicologist chap's assessment of Dizzee in the Guardian makes it into Pseud's Corner this week, which perfectly illustrates what someone said about the column in the first few posts on the recentish Ian Hislop thread (except I can't be arsed digging that one up now)

― DJ Mencap, Friday, 25 January 2008 12:04 (seventeen years ago)

The small ads ain't what they used to be.

― ljubljana, Friday, 25 January 2008 22:45 (seventeen years ago)

one month passes...

arf @ 'from the messageboards'

― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, 7 March 2008 14:37 (seventeen years ago)

Is ILX scapegoated?

― Neil S, Friday, 7 March 2008 15:51 (seventeen years ago)

I just met the guy who compiles 'dumb britain'.

― Pete W, Friday, 7 March 2008 15:55 (seventeen years ago)

Someone actually wrote in this week to complain that Private Eye didn't cover enough pop music!

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 7 March 2008 16:13 (seventeen years ago)

i totally agree!

― CharlieNo4, Friday, 7 March 2008 16:26 (seventeen years ago)

That particular issue got some play in this thread:

Ian Hislop C/D

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 7 March 2008 16:28 (seventeen years ago)

fourteen years pass...

When I started expressing support for trans people Private Eye ran a series of toxic pieces about me; it attacked Reclaim These Streets when its feminism was revealed as inclusive; and it has a long history of snide homophobia.
— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) April 13, 2022

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 April 2022 15:33 (three years ago)

five months pass...

yeesh

It’s not just the OBR he’d like to hide from: Kwasi Kwarteng’s Cambridge doctoral thesis is on “restricted access” to those without his personal permission. Could it be because it, too, was so poor it was rejected first time around? Full story in brand new Private Eye, out today. pic.twitter.com/YtmqBNws1v
— Private Eye Magazine (@PrivateEyeNews) October 5, 2022

― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 5 October 2022 15:28 (three years ago)

the yeesh is for the cartoon, dngaf about his thesis

― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 5 October 2022 15:29 (three years ago)

it's a basic racist caricature from previous ages that doesn't even resemble Kwarteng.

― calzino, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 15:41 (three years ago)

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