Private Eye was really good until HIGNFY started, then Hislop didn't have enough material to go round (the News Quiz didn't cause this trouble, because he had less to contribute).

>Private Eye was really good until HIGNFY started, then Hislop didn't have enough material to go round.

Private Eye is still good (though I didn't read it before HIGNFY).

An interesting paralell is that Private did a parody of the internet, but now are on-line themselves at www.private-eye.co.uk Thanks to Microsft, no less!

>Private Eye was really good until HIGNFY started, then Hislop didn't have enough material to go round (the News Quiz didn't cause this trouble, because he had less to contribute).

I'd never thought about it like that, but that's a fair point. The Eye was really on form in the late 80s - first few years of Hislop's reign. Now it's a bit complacent, out of touch, and worst of all, not all that funny, really.

It still slags off journalists though, and so is still worth reading.

I tend to buy Private Eye and let it fester in a box. Rarely funny but worth keeping tabs on. The new issue made me laugh out loud, with the 'Queen.com' story, re:The Scotsman.

Something I noticed about HIGNFY the other week was a major re-edit in a repeat of the Angela Rippon show. If you saw it you'll know that Angus and Angela had a bit of a fake cat-fight going on.

Thing is, one of her remarks clearly pissed off Angus and this was seen in the Friday showing. The repeat removed the shot of Angus and replaced it with a 45 degree angle of him laughing. An angle never before used in HIGNFY.

I don't have a copy of the rpt, but if anyone has then SOTCAA could maybe preserve it for posterity? Mail here if you do, as I'd like a copy regardless.

Craig Wasname Diary: Good

Gossip about Journalists: WhatthefuckdoIcare?

Paul Foot's bit: Ditto

The "funny" pages near the middle where they pretend to be a newspaper: Utter bollocks.

>Craig Wasname Diary: Good

Occasionally misses the point completely (Mark & Lard - "aren't all Northerners idiots who talk about tits all the time" - think he meant Chris Moyles. Anyway that one was rubbish.). On the whole though, fair enough.
>
>Gossip about Journalists: WhatthefuckdoIcare?
>
I really should stop reading the papers, shouldn't I?

>Paul Foot's bit: Ditto

Not comedy, but worthwhile all the same.
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>The "funny" pages near the middle where they pretend to be a newspaper: Utter bollocks.

Mostly poor these days. They just don't have any new ideas anymore. A lot of the time, I only laugh at Colemanballs and Funny Old World - erm, both of which are readers' contributions. Funny, that.

As for the Cartoons:

Ken Pyne's Corporation Street (the least funny media satire I've ever read, seen or heard)
Yobs - nope.
HomSap - does anyone actually read this? serious question.
Snipcock & Tweed (unless you work at Macmillan or Penguin, this is impenetrable)

It is getting dangerously close to "Try Punch; not funny", the reply the Eye would give to rejected cartoons.

>I really should stop reading the papers, shouldn't I?

It can be done. Just ask yourself: would I miss that long article by A. N. Socialcritic entitled "Why I Love Wearing Suits"?

>>Craig Wasname Diary: Good

Perfectly good, but Brown indulges himself too much with the vernacular. The only link between the words and the supposed author are repeated references to people we'd assume is their celebrity/press friend.
It used to be better.

>>Gossip about Journalists: WhatthefuckdoIcare?

There are certain spin incidents in the press and media which you wouldn't read about anywhere else. Again, that Scotsman story.

>>Paul Foot's bit: Ditto

He pisses over Mark Thomas.

>>The "funny" pages near the middle where they pretend to be a newspaper: Utter bollocks.

The problem with the decline in the funnies section is that the Eye runs on a group authorship policy, so we don't know which gag-writer is coming up with what. Often frustrating so I just don't bother reading them.

>Mostly poor these days. They just don't have any new ideas anymore. A lot of the time, I only laugh at Colemanballs and Funny Old World - erm, both of which are readers' contributions. Funny, that.

VLS has a very flimsy job there as far as I can tell.

Why do they bother having so many jokes about Punch magazine and Fayad - To me, it just looks like Hislops a bitter old man. If Punch really is as bad as it's made out to be, then surely there is no need for so many attacks against it. Or is it Private Eyes own Case of Polly Filler?

The noteworthy thing about the Funny Old World section is that Victor Lewis Smith routinely rewrites the news stories to make them "funnier", fabricating quotes and so on. Missing The Point Of Life, rather.

>>>Paul Foot's bit: Ditto
>
>He pisses over Mark Thomas.

But then who doesn't? Only someone not tall enough.

Private Eye has never been as funny since Peter Cook died. His own contributions may have been few and far between, but when your boss is the funniest man in the world, you must be a bit more keen to impress.

Re:Peter Cook

I resisted making that point earlier because the decline since 95 is pretty hard to attribute any more specifically. He only contributed to the Christmas issues from what I heard. That's towards the end obviously.

If you want a true reflection of how good Cook was with Ingrams then try to track down the 1961-71 Best Of. Long deleted but it does include loads of Profumo and the Cook penned expose on the Krays. All brilliant.

"Perfectly good, but Brown indulges himself too much with the vernacular. The only link between the words and the supposed author are repeated references to people we'd assume is their celebrity/press friend.
It used to be better"

Correct - Brown is another example of a talent overused, and thus with diminishing quality control. But his original parody of Paul Johnson (loony right-wing columnist) around 1990 remains one of the funniest things I've ever read. Shame he had to re-use the target.

PE is hopeless when trying to talk about pop music/ pop culture in general. But what irks me is the snobbery that clearly comes across as well. Hislop's attitude to Newman & Baddiel was clearly coloured by the fact that he could not accept that they had gone to Cambridge. Whether you like them or not, that's a bit unfair.

But then, why do you think so much of PE nowadays is just references to articles/letters in the Daily Telegraph/ Times/ Spectator... he'll come out as a Tory in a few years time.

I first looked at PE around 84/85 and didn't think it was particularly funny. But it was brilliant in the early Hislop years 86-90. Though having Thatcher as a satirical target probably helped.

Shall we get back to talking about HIGNFY? I seem to have diverted everyone.

>he'll [Hislop] come out as a Tory in a few years time.

So what?

>>he'll [Hislop] come out as a Tory in a few years time.
>
>So what?
>
>

So what is the point of him posing as a non-Tory? Oh yes he does, read any interview or just read PE or his other articles, it is a part of his whole persona as a serious satirist that he is detached from his targets. But I would contend that he isn't.

>So what is the point of him posing as a non-Tory? Oh yes he does, read any interview or just read PE or his other articles, it is a part of his whole persona as a serious satirist that he is detached from his targets. But I would contend that he isn't.

1)Once described The Guardian as his most hated newspaper in Britain (yes, including The Daily Mail, or The Sun)
2)On Desert Island Discs in 1994, described himself as "conservative" with a small "c" (You're certainly something with a small "c", I remember Martin Clunes replying on Harry Enfield once - apt? Hislop co-wrote that sketch).
3) Did Private Eye only start really attacking the Tories because they were ineffectual rather than hateful?

I feel a little bit of breakfast return to the surface whenever I hear Hislop talk about his main occupation being "a satirist". That Dennis Pennis interview where he said that made him look one of the most foolish of the Pennis victims - it's not even as if Pennis needed to say anything else.

He probably was quite funny on Have I Got News once upon a time though. And he probably wrote a couple of good sketches for Spitting Image.

Not sure if Hislop really is a Tory - if memory serves he claims to have voted for every major party - I think he has voted Green and Lib Dem in recent years (although I can't remember where I heard this so it might be bollocks). To be fair PE has kept up a very stringent attack on Labour for some of its more right wing leanings and was always savagely anti-Thatcherite. It also provides a home for Paul Foot who is decidedly left wing.
However, PE is far less funny than it was in the early nineties, although this I think is a problem for many satirists who simply try and use the same gags about Blair as they did with Thatcher. The only people who've done really funny stuff about Labour are Iannuchi and the Armistice crew. Hislop may not be Tory but he is a real fogey, and anyone who can slag off football as boring, and then go on about cricket needs their head examined - he'll be saying he likes rugby next. And he hates the internet. But he does hate arty films - he gave Truly Madly Deeply a much needed kicking on Room 101 - one of my R101 highlights. Hmmm...

Hislop wrote 'The First Atheist Tabernacle Choir' for Spitting Image. That is enough reason to respect him.

Re:pop culture in PE. Harry Thompson's Ingrams biog mentions that Hislop tried for a pop column when he started but it was shouted down by the whole staff. Probably a good thing what with his recurring "beat combo" gag on HIGNFY.

To be fair, the Death-Of-Diana issue of PE was a brave challenge to an idiotic and hypocritical consensus.

Last two messages - spot on. I might add that while everyone else 'radical' was cowering in the corner for fear of upsetting the Diana-mourning masses, Hislop was everywhere in the media defending the Eye, which must have taken some bravery...

>Last two messages - spot on. I might add that while everyone else 'radical' was cowering in the corner for fear of upsetting the Diana-mourning masses, Hislop was everywhere in the media defending the Eye, which must have taken some bravery...

I must say, when I first saw the cover, I thought 'This is a bit insensitive' - speaking ill of the dead and so on. But when you think about it, the GROSS HYPOCRISY surrounding much of the papers' output was much much worse. OK, so when someone famous has died, you don't want to list all the faults they had and so on. And I'll admit I was carried along by the 'national sense of grief'. But to make this woman out to be a flawless, saintly figure, was plain silly.

One thing I read in Private Eye was a quote from some tabloid saying that Princes William and Harry shouldn't try to stop the press 'mourning' about their mother, because she was the 'people's princess', not just their mother. I found that offensive.

Diana did a fair bit of work for charity, but there are other royals who have done more. Princess Anne did loads, but Diana got the press attention because of her photogenic qualities. Can you imagine the same happening when the Queen Mother dies? I doubt it.

RE: Diana. What i found intereasting was Mother Teresa died around the same time, yet got hardly any coverage because 'Saint' Diana had done so much work for chairities and things. Oh, and she was British.

She'd touched people with AIDS you know. Oh yes, on purpose, with her hand and everything.