Photos: Alex Sturrock

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 British newspapers they made during the two weeks it takes to put their issue 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. Without the magazine’s fortnightly needling, the spin of Blair’s authoritarian 90s rule may well have slickly skated into the imperious presidential model of government that smiling Tony always seemed to have such a massive hard-on for.

It is no coincidence that, as the longest-serving editor of the magazine, Ian 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.

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.

Vice: So what is the day-to-day of doing this job? I’ve always been fascinated by how Private Eye works. It’s so consistent.

Ian Hislop: Nearly everybody works somewhere else. The journalists tend to have other jobs, and most of the writers do as well. The week before we go to press people turn up in batches really and the journalism tends to get done in there [the main office down the corridor] and the jokes tend to get done in here [his personal office]. The jokes are collaborative. There are usually three or four people doing it.

Who’s in charge?

Essentially me.

Which other papers do your journalists work for? Do they write under different names?

A lot of them don’t admit they write for us, which is fine.

Why do they write for you, though?

I think it’s about the mischief really. And they can write stories they can’t write in their own papers really because most of the national press have some other agenda depending who owns them or how friendly they are to the people you’re trying to write about.

Who owns you guys now?

We used to be owned by the comedian Peter Cook (Bedazzled, Derek & Clive) but then he died and he left most of the shares to his sisters and to his wife.

So it’s still completely independent.

The rest of the shares are owned by a sort of rag-bag of people that Peter borrowed money off in the 60s, so people like Jane Asher and Dirk Bogard, but he died so it’s now his nephew. It’s a pretty odd bunch.

When Private Eye was started, what do you think was its purpose? Was it set up to be a counter-culture magazine?

Well, no. It was started by a group of friends who went to college together. They thought they were funny, they made each other laugh and they thought: “This is better than working.” I think that’s what it was about. No one consciously starts a counter-culture because they’re not aware of being counter-culture, it’s just what they are. I think they were basically bolshy and quite rebellious people. Most of them didn’t have fathers. They’d either died in the war or died early and the sons didn’t get proper jobs and so they thought, “We can do this.” The essential component was making each other laugh and then as it developed [founder] Richard Ingrams said, “We don’t only want to make people laugh we want to tell them things that they didn’t know”, so a sort of journalism culture attached itself, mostly because they had this brilliant man called Paul Foot. He was a very good journalist.



He was the guy who really brought the journalism into it?

Yeah, and sadly he’s not with us any more.

Who’s taking care of that now then?

I had to hire three people to replace Paul. One is a man called Richard Brooks, who is absolutely brilliant. He used to work for Customs and Excise and we lured him over to the dark side because most journalists are illiterate financially. He isn’t but his record on public finance is just fantastic. He’s done some extraordinarily good stuff. I don’t want to be that specific, but a lot of the best columns we run are by people outside the office. We run a health column that is entirely written by pissed-off doctors.

So your contributors are mainly people who have contacted you with dirt on people and you’ve kept them on as contacts.
Absolutely. There’s the local council column that is written by local journalists who can’t get stuff in their own papers so they send it to us. Council advertising is quite heavy and you know what you can’t get in, but all that stuff comes from them. The TV column is also written by an insider.

Is he a secret insider?

Yes, and he would definitely be fired if they knew who it was.

Ha ha. Who is the person who writes from inside of the Houses of Parliament?

That’s a couple of people. Most of whom we don’t say who they are.

And so how many is your core team of contributors?

About 20.

And that’s in the UK only. Have you ever thought of exporting Private Eye in to different countries?

No, we’re not like you. We stay inside this country. It’s what we do well. We know this place. We don’t sell outside.

Private Eye covers from years gone by.

Your circulation has gone up recently hasn’t it?
What do you think drives people to keep buying your magazine? I thought British people were only meant to buy trashy crap about TV stars or interviews with footballers’ girlfriends?
Heat Nuts Ha ha. Everybody was doing cocaine and listening to Oasis and going, “Waheeey!”
What did the circulation go down to?
How was it in the 80s, AKA “the decade of excess”?
So human suffering is great for circulation?
I’ve met a lot of kids in the past few years. They were supposedly “underground” or “alternative” kids and they all want to vote Conservative in the next election which, before Blair, was anathema to a kid like that.
I remember saying things like: “But do you not remember what the Conservatives were like? I mean, they really weren’t that great.” And they came back to me saying things like: “We don’t like Blair’s stance on the war.”
Ha ha, yeah. They would have preferred the Conservatives’ stance on the war which would have been a lot more cool or something. What do you feel when you hear kids making statements like that?
But they have more access to information than ever before now.
From your insiders and knowledge of the workings of the Houses of Parliament, do you think the Conservatives will win the next election and, if so, what do you think they’ll do?
Do you not?
You don’t think they would get rid of the National Health Service?
What have you found out about that guy then?
I always thought it’s a weird thing to want to be a politician.
What about Boris Johnson?
What do you mean “our lot”?
I guess so, yeah. Are you pally with him?

Private Eye covers from years gone by.

His mayoral acceptance speech was something else. I watched it a few times.
Here’s another thing I need your insider knowledge for. That must have been a prank at the Olympics when they flashed up the portrait of Myra Hindley during the “Come to England, it’s lovely” video?
Yeah, I know that but surely it must have been a prank?
But when they flashed it up on the screen for a short time it just looks like the original mugshot of Myra.
What is top of your list of what’s to be proud of in Britain?

When was the last time you got sued. I guess it doesn’t happen as much as it used to?
That’s how often?
How often do you get them? Every week?
Why do you think it changed?
Have you had the same lawyers throughout the whole period?
Ha ha. So what stories are you working on right now that could get you sued?
How bad do you think it’s going to get, “credit crunch” and recession-wise?
Is there any story you could pass on to us because you can’t print it or you’re scared of getting sued?
What were some of things that people have told you that were true that weren’t put in there?
You must have met Edwina Curry?
Have you ever imagined what it’s like to screw her?
How old are you now, if you don’t mind me asking?
Has anyone ever offered you another job, or offered to buy you out?
Buy you out or offered you another job?
Do you think that’s important?