Famed for its bitingly funny satire, as well as its propensity for getting sued by the famous figures who receive the magazines attention, Private Eye has become a British institution since it's first issue, which was released in the autumn of 1961.
Private Eye has it's roots further back in history than the Oxford contingent of the early 'Satire Boom' which began at the Edinburgh Festival of 1960, and can probably be traced back to the Shrewsbury School, which was attended by Richard Ingrams and Willie Rushton. During their time there the pair contributed both verse and drawings to the school magazine, 'The Salopian'. Both went their separate ways after they passed their A-Levels, but the idea of a writing for a magazine must have stayed with them and was rekindled when Ingrams and another Old Salopian, Paul Foot, arrived at University College, Oxford in 1958.
The year prior to the pair's arrival at Oxford, Adrian Berry, the son of Lord Hartwell the then owner of The Telegraph started sending in contributions to the collge magazine, but after finding that the regular college press were unwilling to publish such 'close to the bone' material, and the local W H Smith wouldn't stock it, he had started a small humorous magazine, entitled Parson’s Pleasure to give his work an outlet. Berry was approaching his finals, and wanting to hand the editorship over to someone, he became an acquaintance of Paul Foot, who wrote in the Parson’s Pleasure gossip columns. Foot saw the opportunity to revive some of the ideas that he and Ingrams had had at Shrewsbury.
Upon Foot taking over as editor, the style of the magazine changed quite radically. It became a fortnightly paper, in came the letters from fictional correspondents, such as Hubert Drivel, and more cartoons were published all drawn by Rushton, including the now legendary doodle which showed a giraffe standing at a bar, with the caption, 'No, no, I insist - the high-balls are on me'. Despite the new format, Parson's Pleasure was running out of money, and the majority of the writers and illustrators, including Ingrams, Rushton and Foot left to the Balliol publication, Mesopotamia. The Parson's Pleasure team joined up with John Wells, Peter Cook and Christopher Booker, who was to become the first editor of the Eye, and launched the first issue of Private Eye, which soon reached a circulation of 80,000 copies, if you happen to find one of these original copies, they can now be worth up to £1000.
It wasn't a lasting success however, and by 1962, Private Eye found itself in financial difficulties, and had to be bailed out by Peter Cook. Many of its competitors fell by the wayside. The magazine's financial position wasn't aided by the fact that the victims of many of The Eye's send ups were rich industrialists, who often sued them to within an inch of their lives. Of course anyone suing them automatically received even more attention from the wags who wrote the paper, leading to many feuds, most notably, James Goldsmith throughout the 1970's, Robert Maxwell during the 1980's, and Mohammed al-Fayed though the 1990's. The staff seemed to enjoy winding up the rich and powerful, a point highlighted by Richard Ingrams, who claimed that ' My own motto is publish and be sued.'
The structure of the paper has settled down over time, and there are an almost endless supply of 'in-jokes', many of which exist to prevent libel actions. Examples include Rupert Murdoch being constantly labelled as 'The Dirty Digger', and Mohammed al-Fayed being lampooned as 'The Phoney Pharaoh'. Those who haven't attempted to sue the Eye often come in for a little bashing as well, with fellow newsmen and publications such as the Grauniad as the typo ridden Guardian is known, Piers Morgan a.k.a Moron, editor of the Mirror and Max Hastings or as he is affectionately known 'Hitler' , ex-itor of the Daily Torygraph, ahem, Telegraph (shurely shome mishtake - Ed) currently of the London Evening Standard, all featuring prominently.
- The Cover
- Not normal worthy of a mention in most publications, the cover of The Eye usually sports a photograph of a recent news event, with subtly ' altered' speech bubbles. The last example I bought had a picture of Colin Powell US Secretary of Defence, and Ariel Sharon, President of Israel shaking hands. The speech bubbles read as Colin Powell saying 'So we've got an agreement?' to which Sharon replied ' Yes, I'm going to ignore you.'
- Contents
- Featuring Lord Gnome's editorial, normally amongst the most scathing attacks in the issue, this used to be written by Peter Cook, but is now in the capable hands of Ian Hislop.
- Classifieds
- Most papers' classified sections aren't worth bothering with, but they take on a new lease of life in Private Eye. The funniest section hands down is the now famous Eye Need, where people publish their pleas for cash, with attached account and sorting codes, Eye Love are the often bizarre personals, and Eye Want where you're almost guaranteed to find someone making a Channel 4 documentary on threesomes, or a BBC2 documentary on lost love, so if you're looking for your 15 minutes of fame, this would be a truly appalling place to start.
- Colemanballs
- Celebrating the regular cock-ups made by sports presenters, originally poking fun at David Coleman himself, as he was famous for his gaffes, but now covering any and all of his peers. This is often extended to Warballs after the Afghanistan conflict, and since the death of the Queen Mum Ma'amballs.
- Dumb Britain
- Funny Old World
- A selection of quite disturbing, but sickeningly funny news stories sent in from readers around the world.
- O.B.N
- Pseuds Corner
- Some of the highly confusing and pretentious quotes from the world of print, as sent in by Eye readers.
- St. Albion Parish News
- A relatively recent addition, this parodies Our Glorious Leader as vicar of St. Albions Parish Church, and skewers much of the political in-fighting and back corridor goings on within the Labour Government. It has recently been featuring message sent in by the Vicars friend, Reverend Dubya Bush from the Church of the Seventh Day Morons in Washington
- Street of Shame
- A slight misnomer since the relocation of many of the papers headquarters away from Fleet Street, this part of the mighty organ records the comings and goings in the nation's newspapers.
- Hackwatch
- The upshot of some careful reading of the daily papers editorials this section covers some of the outrageous about-faces and contradictions made by papers on a week to week basis.
- Rotten Boroughs
- One of the longest running sections of The Eye, this highlights the disturbing amount of corruption in local government around the county, often stirring up many a shit-storm for those who it catches with their hand in the till.
- HP Sauce
- Off The Rails/Signal Failures
- Covering mistakes, mis-management and idiocy within the Rail Industry.
- Down on the Farm
- Cartoon
- The Directors - Screwing the customers for a better salary
- Crossword
- Quite simply the filthiest crossword I've ever seen published.
The Eye is currently entering its fifth decade of existence, under the stewardship of Ian Hislop, who is also a team captain on Have I Got News For You, and is still the home of contemporary British satire.
For more of the same, see www.private-eye.co.uk
http://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/archive/0001/13_2/01.shtml.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/tate/cruikshank/satire2.shtml
http://64.154.21.227/news1999/july99/news5712.html.