For the dudes in fedoras- see
Private Detective.
A British fortnightly satirical magazine, running since 1961.
It does a lot of investigative journalism and has been sued for libel a considerable number of times (it usually loses). Its editor, Ian Hislop (a team captain on
Have I Got News For You), even held the record for 'Most Sued Man in England' for a time. For many years it was verging on a point of pride how long it had been since they *won* a case. The first time Ian Hislop won a libel suit, the following issue was filled in celebratory manner with yet more libelous material, just because they knew they'd get away with it.
(For those of us reading from
Eagle Land, it's important to point out that under British law it is possible for something to be both perfectly true
and libelous, as it is up to the defendant to prove the truth of what he/she has said. In the USA, the person bringing the suit has to prove that what was said is false. The flip side of this is that getting an injunction to prevent something being published in the first place is rather harder in Britain - otherwise known as
Publish and be damned.)
It has a number of regular cartoon strips and ongoing parodies, such as:
- "The Broonites", which features the Brown camp of the current Labour government and who all speak in exaggerated Scottish accents- even the English ones. This is done in the style of The Broons, a cartoon strip from The Sunday Post. This replaced "St. Albion's Parish News" (Tony Blair as a vicar).
- Contains an apparently deliberate example for comic of Just Plane Wrong. In the 1205 strip, Gordon Brown is put on a plane to Afghanistan to solve the government's popularity problems. The plane- an English Electric Lightning, long gone from RAF service.
- "Prime Ministerial Decrees"- Gordon Brown as a Lenin-style leader.
- "Dave Snooty and his Pals"- David Cameron in the style of Beano strip Lord Snooty. Boris Johnson features quite a bit.
- "Celeb", made into a brief TV series, it involves a fading pop-star and his wife, daughter and son.
- "Supermodels"
- "It's Grim Up North London"
- "Apparently"
- "Pseuds Corner", a column which highlights particularly pompous and pretentious quotes from that week's media.
- "Colemanballs", which records ridiculous or just plain stupid quotes from the broadcast - and usually sports - media. Named after the now-retired and notoriously gaffe-prone sports commentator David Coleman. A typical Colemanball, spoken by Alan Minter: "Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing - but none of them serious."
- "The Book of (Insert Israeli leader name here)", which presents contemporary Middle Eastern events in the style of the King James Bible, and usually ends in "and so it was back to the square which is called one".
There are also features on the hypocrisy of the Fleet Street press ("Street of Shame") and a great section called "Rotten Boroughs" on local council misbehaviour, along with annual awards- such as for Tory bigots.
Fond of the
Unusual Euphemism and obscure nickname, sometimes for legal reasons, to the point that it can become
unreadable to those not in the know. Most of these are derived from very obscure old political scandals. Some examples:
- Baillie Vass = former Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home (after a newspaper mixed up the captions for a photo of him with a photo of the titular castle)
- It's all right not to have heard of him- he was only in office a year.
- "Exotic cheroot" = cannabis
- "Tired and emotional" = drunk
- "Discussing Uganda" = having sex
- "The reply given in the case of Arkell vs. Pressdram" = fuck off (for details, see Sophisticated As Hell)
- "Brenda" = HM The Queen
- "Brian" = Prince Charles
- "[Takes out onion]" = insincere public crying
- The Grauniad = The Guardian (a newspaper known for its spelling mistakes)
- The Torygraph = The Daily Telegraph (right-leaning newspaper)
- The Indescribablyboring = The Independent (another newspaper)
- Er..
- That's it. (That's enough nicknames. Ed)
However, the truly unparalleled touch of genius about
Private Eye is widely thought to be its famous
(cont. p.94).
