For those of you without taste or eyes, Private Eye is a fortnightly satirical newsprint magazine that contains more actual news than all the other newspapers made in Britain during the two weeks it takes to put an issue of Private Eye together. In fact, it is one of a very small number of news publications that remains worth a shit.
Not only is it consistently hilarious, informative and subversive, it wields a mighty punch. Private Eye has acted like a sharpened pin to the whoopee cushion of incessant lies and deceit that has become the common currency of modern British politics. Its relentless and savage satire remains perhaps one of the truest checks on UK executive power. As if to prove that, today its editor Ian Hislop will give evidence at the Leveson inquiry, as the British press tries to figure out how best to regulate itself in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
It is no coincidence that, as the longest-serving editor of the magazine, Hislop is the most sued man in Britain and that the magazine keeps a “fighting fund” on hand to payroll the endless litigation they face.
Back in October 2008, we met him in his offices in Soho and drank tea with him while staring at all the amazing stuff on the walls and trying to concentrate on asking the questions. (He has a piano in there on which they play Mozart while they’re coming up with jokes.) He is my hero.
Read the full interview here
