WARNING! THIS ENTRY MIGHT DISTRESS READERS WHO
PRIDE THEMSELVES ON ‘BEING ENLIGHTENED’, ‘HAVING
A SENSE OF HUMOUR’ AND FOR WHOM ‘BEING PART OF
THE CROWD’ IS IMPORTANT.
THIS entry might, and most probably will, mean very little to nothing to most readers from outside the United Kingdom. But - well, OK, fair enough. It’s not my probably but yours, frankly.
Anyone interested in what ‘Private Eye’ might is very welcome pull their finger out (as we say in Britain) and do a bit of digging. Hint: it’s not published by the Vatican.
My reason for publishing it on my blog? I’ve published so very little, many of you might be forgetting what a fabulous guy I am. I really can’t think of a better reason.
Anyone agree with me that under Ian Hislop the Eye had become increasingly dreary, unfunny and rather prim and - whisper it - fucking bloody boring? Hislop’s been there now since 1774 and it shows.
The cartoons rarely raise a laugh (unlike one of my favourites from some years ago: picture a young mustachioed German squaddie standing to attention in a WWI trench while his superior officer informs and even high-ranking officer ‘Sir, the corporal here has a great idea for a sequel’).
Now? Well, as I pointed out a few weeks ago one cartoon about a supposed foreign football player coming to the Premier League had been recycled - I suspect inadvertently - from an earlier PE cartoon whose caption then ran: ‘Ebola coming to Europe? Who’s signed him then?’
I wrote to Lord Gnome about it, but there were, it seemed, too many other and better letters that demanded to be published and mine didn’t make the cut. Nor have several letters I’ve written to the good Lord to tell us in his
‘Number Crunching’ feature how much he rakes in every year - PE salary, HIGNFY, BBC TV documentaries and Radio 4 programmes. His lordship is a tad shy about telling us.
OK, there’s no denying the Eye does a lot of reporting on and uncovering skullduggery in government, in our local authorities, in the City etc, but it’s all a little earnest, all a little too worthy, all a little too ‘well done, Hislop! You’ve won the Founder’s Prize for Zeal, Integrity and Hard Work! Keep it up, lad!’
The Street of Shame was once somewhere where you - we - read about the drunken and appalling (and often funny) shenanigans of folk you knew, almost knew, had heard of, or who were known by people you knew - Fleet Street was and - now metaphorically - is quite narrow These days The Street of Shame is all about ‘how awful and hypocritical and horrid our press barons are!’
Fair enough, but being reminded very fortnight that water is wet doesn’t much do it for me. I know it’s wet, as do all other Eye readers - they were told two weeks ago, and two weeks before that, and a fortnight before that.
Ironically, given that a vital member of ‘the Establishment’ is the anti-Establishment figure, the Eye is very much ‘the Establishment’. I told Lord Gnome that in my letter and reminded him that Punch, once the scourge of the nation in 19th-century Britain eventually died of respectability.
Arise, Sir Ian for ‘services to satire’. The trouble is that in cosy Old Blighty ‘satire’ is nothing more dangerous than being rude to folk. The worst Hislop will face is being snubbed in the Groucho. In Russia, China, Singapore, Zimbabwe, Iran and rather too many other countries engaging in satire can cost earn you a decade or more in jail and if you are unlucky lose you your life.
OK, PE was founded but a gang of privileged public school boys but frankly (though I’m sure we all now realise that ‘background’, ‘heritage’, colour, class, religion and to which side you dress have no bearing on you a person *).
And going by the ads at the front and rear of the mag in some ways not much has changed - ‘No Ordinary Reading Light’ - ergonomically designed on the outside, inside it’s one of the most advance reading lights in the world’ And yours for just £249.99 for the HD Table Light or £299.99 for the Floor Light!
What’s wrong with Argos’ Home Morlie Floor Lamp - Matt Black , yours for just £30? Nothing, except it doesn’t impress Jules and Simon next door half as much as telling them you’ve blown £249.99 on an ergonomically designed most advance light.
Now I feel a headache coming on and must go and lie down with a soothing glass of Campari and tonic.
* I shall though, admit, that I am still defeated by the undeniably true statistic that a disproportionately high number of men and women in our ‘top jobs’ were privately educated compared to the number who were not. And there has to be a reason (though it was fuck all use for me, I have to add).
