Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and this is a very exciting, rather special
episode of page 94 for us because for the first time in the many years that this
podcast has been in production, we have gone live, we've gone electric, we've
gone to the Cambridge Literary Festival.
this is a recording of a show that we put on at the Cambridge Literary Festival
about a week ago, and it's a format that we call.... Many questions, which
is definitely legally safe and won't baroque any, copyright claims against us.
So these are questions that, the audience sent in.
These are questions that came in, the room on the night.
These are questions that frankly, we've always wanted to be asked, and
we were disappointed nobody else had.
So it's me.
It's Adam McQueen.
It's Helen Lewis.
It's Ian Hislop.
We started off by asking Ian, the editor, how he thinks the first year
of the labor government is going.
Take it away, Ian.
Ian: There was a very brief honeymoon period and we thought to start with,
'cause the comic device for, the late.
Tory Governments was the WhatsApp group in which they were
incredibly rude about each other.
And we thought this was a brilliant bit of fiction.
And then the Covid inquiry revealed that this was just documentary.
and this is how government's now done.
So we thought, oh, we'll keep the same device and see if it works.
And then immediately you find out that, this Labour Cabinet
works by WhatsApp group.
and the actual meetings are equally, equally toxic.
Helen: Everybody's on what?
So Robert Genrich added everyone in his entire phone book, basically
to a WhatsApp group this week.
Yes.
Did you read the story?
Why was this?
pure supposition because he wanted to do some leadership plotting and
hit the wrong button, I presume.
Okay.
And was like, delete, delete, But then Sarai Vine, equally male co on Sunday
columnist, male columnist started a huge WhatsApp group with all of
her media chums for her book launch.
And then about five of them have already got columns out of it.
If you see this, it's extraordinary.
It's like what would happen if you added everybody who has a newspaper
column to the say WhatsApp group?
They'd all get a column out of it.
We've just found this sort of perpetual motion like machine
for British journalism.
Oh, great.
I don't think there's
Adam: anything more humiliating than being publicly revealed
as one of Robert Jen's mate
Andy: awful fee for libel, great libel case.
He claimed it was a ma. He is running the London Marathon.
He claimed he
Ian: is and he said he, he had to contact all these people because
he was trying to raise money for charity, which the Conservative
party is now technically a charity.
but, I think, he's doing it for the greater good.
No, I don't.
Andy: Okay, so mixed report card, it sounds it's very early.
I should, I just wanna, do a little, devil's advocate thing there.
It's extremely early and God, it feels like a long time isn't I know.
It does.
Adam: Trump's been in three months.
That feels like a lifetime now, doesn't it?
Yes.
It is a sentence for me.
Yeah.
Helen: Yes.
I think the balance argument is that whoever got in would've faced
a really tough puzzle, right?
Of the fact that there are intractable problems with the economy.
We just had a very high wave immigration, the Boris wave, which is traditionally
what politicians have done when they want to juice the economy a bit.
But it doesn't seem to have done everything that there was hoped to be.
So you've got the situation in which people are both grumpy about the
high immigration, but also grumpy about the lack of economic growth.
And, that would've been a problem whoever won
Ian: right.
Helen: That last election.
Ian: Yeah.
But the, whoever won might have been slightly better at politics than secure.
Helen: A harsh but fair judgment on No,
Ian: I'm, not trying to be harsh.
It just seems to be that.
Some of the things that he did, many people could have said,
why don't you not do that?
Helen: I mean, I
Ian: think that the winter fuel allowance, I'm just guessing I'm
not an expert, but maybe don't start with punching tensioners in the face.
Andy: Yeah.
Save that one for build up to it.
Yeah.
Applause: Yeah.
Andy: okay.
I think, unless anyone has more on that, I'd love to move on to
our next question 'cause we've got so many questions to get through.
Yes.
Format is many questions.
this one's a bit more of an Irish one actually.
it's, are you still being sued?
And if not, why not?
Because Ian, you have a reputation as the most sued man in British legal history.
Yes.
But there seemed to have been fewer huge court cases recently.
are you doing something wrong here?
Helen: have you, mellowed?
Ian: Yes.
No.
they did change the libel laws, largely as a result of a number of spectacular.
Cases, all of which I lost.
the guidance over libel change completely.
in the old days, public bodies and councils, you could sue
and get your employer to pay.
fire chiefs did it.
Policemen did it.
Local councils did it politic, everybody did it.
Because there was no risk to you that changed suddenly, people's
reputations weren't quite so valuable to them after all.
so the numbers went down there.
Then they changed the sentencing guidance after a brilliant case
involving private eye losing against the wife of a serial killer.
other people tended to lose against, celebrities, people
like we lost to Sonya Sutcliffe.
but the rules were changed after that because.
If the juries were just coming up with absolutely bonkers figures.
then the internet happened, which again, was news to me.
Adam: he's talking about two weeks ago as well.
Ian: But essentially it means everybody is libeling each other all the time online.
and the whole climate changed.
publications, having, been given more license by the changes in the
law, were just way behind the plot.
Everybody else online, was essentially being unpleasant
to each other all the time.
So our main problems nowadays are confidentiality.
Any deal involving a public body and the government, it's confidential.
They can't possibly tell you anything about it, so you can't get through there.
privacy, anything about an individual, it's private, so
you're not allowed to know that.
and anything otherwise.
Interesting.
There's usually a court order on, last year we spent vast amount of money
challenging draconian orders about Lucy.
Let me, and about nine months later, finally we were allowed to actually print,
something about what the experts had said.
Or rather hadn't said in court.
So we are still wasting a huge amount of your money.
I want to make that absolutely clear.
if you are a subscriber or you're a buyer, but it's less fighting it in the court.
those days sadly, have gone
Adam: how much of your time is spent negotiating?
'cause a lot of it's moved to ahead of publication, hasn't it?
Yeah.
And how much, what conversations do you have with the lawyer are ahead of time?
How much notice you take of what the lawyer says.
Ian: a huge amount.
Adam,
you can imagine a lot of it is basically they're saying
you can't possibly say that.
And we're saying, how can we say that, in a better way.
So if the original copy probably delivered by the three of you
said, he's a tremendous crook.
Can we say he's a well-known northern businessman?
Who could we have in mind and, that tends to work.
I think
Adam: one of the biggest payouts that the or biggest legal troubles that
private day ever got into was long before all of our time back in the seventies.
And it was the James Goldsmith case
Ian: Yes.
Adam: Where we were, a blizzard of Ritz, over a hundred writ.
And he sued the distributors and he sued the news agents and he sued
the printers and he sued absolutely.
Everyone tied up in court cases for, years and years and a lot of that centered
over the use of the word obstructing.
He said it was all that Lord Luke, unbelievably, and the role that
Goldsmith and John Aspen, all that kind of Claremont Crowder had in,
helping Lord Luke to escape after he murdered his, children's nanny.
and that's not libelous.
no.
That's it.
And he's dead anyway.
Not libel.
Lu Luke.
He's, officially dead.
He's, yeah.
but the phrase that he used was, police have met with obstruction and silence.
From this group of people, at which point the lawyers pounced,
I think it was Carter Ruck.
It usually is Carter, isn't it?
Carter Ruck and said, hang on.
Obstructing the police in the course of their duties, that's a criminal offense.
You've clearly heinously accused our client of a criminal offense,
which was not the intention at all.
So it can be as much as just your one word that Yeah.
Can make a hell of a difference.
Can't I?
Ian: I should say our case in those days, and certainly when I was editing,
we were frequently sued by Carter Rock.
. Peter Carter Rock and Company, the well-known solicitors, and private.
I didn't help its case by intentionally mis printing their name every week.
so it appeared as Carter fuck.
and Peter Carter Rock, who's a very senior and serious figure,
rang up and said, you are pathetic.
I do not want to appear in your magazine as Peter Carter fight.
I said, absolutely, Peter.
It won't happen again.
So next week it was Peter Farter.
K.
It's very grown up stuff at private eye.
Andy: here's an interesting one.
Ha.
Have any of you ever regretted working for private Eye, Adam?
Can, you ask me again at the end of this evening?
Helen: I did have a moment when I, my first day and everybody took enormous
pleasure in telling me about the briefing you'd had about if anybody
tries to break into the office, you should try and stab them with a pen.
Applause: Yeah.
Helen: And the first time someone told me this, I thought they were
trying to be helpful and about after the fifth person had told me this,
I began to realize it was a sort of hazing that I was going through.
and everybody in the art was trying to put this sort of terrible fear into me.
Yeah.
But apart from that.
I have to say, one of the things that I always thought before I joined
Private Eye was it was a little bit like Willy Wonka's chocolate Factory.
And not the
Andy: children disappear all the time.
That's the
Helen: But it's, but it, because it's got such a kind of law about it, but actually
because it doesn't have bylines in it.
It emerges in this way that you don't like I wanted to see behind the curtain.
I just thought that was all really exciting to me.
and so when I did the swaty thing of, I read both of Adam's books, his,
50 years on sale at all good books.
We go terrific books.
Thank
Applause: you.
Helen: But I think that's one of the things that's nicest
about, private eyes that.
Actually the, office looks like it's grown organically from the ground, but it
has got, this kind of like a rainforest got this kind of ecosystem that you
would never planned from the start.
Does this make, am I being wildly offensive here?
Ian: does make sense?
Yes.
And accurate.
Yeah.
Helen: But I, I think that's one of the things, it's, got such a distinctive
taste to it that actually, I just don't think I've ever found it.
That, which is what makes me not.
Ever regret having started there because it's, it is a unique thing in
British public life, and I just think that's what people like about it.
Adam: When we had our, 50th anniversary, back in 2011, the v and a amazingly did an
exhibition all about private eye, and the course senior creator came in and said,
what I really, want here is to establish, know the whole atmosphere of the
office, the, kind of feel of the office and lots of other sort of VNA people
who are used to dealing with ancient parchments and sculptures and things.
We don't really get what you mean here and after, while he.
He just grabbed a load of paperwork and just threw it on
the floor and said like that.
And that's basically our office is what it's like.
Yeah.
Ian: The question did, do you ever regret when the wind screen
shattered behind me in a taxi, on Oxford Street and on police appeared.
I thought, this isn't great.
'cause the taxi driver thought that we'd been shot.
but then I had a mar marvelous moment when the policeman said, is there anyone
who might bear a grudge against you?
And I thought, yeah, all But it wasn't, it was a demy and as.
The other thing about working at PT is your colleagues
are always very supportive.
And my friend Dick Newman, the cartoonist said, oh, very exciting.
You were attacked by a deist.
Andy: here's one for you, Ian.
Which of your fallen enemies do you secretly miss?
Ian: Robert Maxwell was.
amazingly good copy.
he was not a good man.
Yeah.
I think, that's, not libelous now he was obsessed by private diet.
There's always someone who's obsessed by the magazine.
I'm usually some very, rich businessman.
It was Robert Maxwell.
It was Jimmy Goldsmith.
Asil, Nadir Ed.
Mohamed Ed.
actually Ed, I was once at an event like this and a boy who was about 18,
he got up and said, would it embarrass you to know that there's a relative
of Mohammed Fayed in this room?
I said, doesn't embarrass me.
Embarrass him.
Yeah.
Quite.
So if there is anyone in Fair enough,
Helen: There's something about that era of like magnificent monsters
Applause: Yeah.
Helen: That I always feel has happened more widely through public life in
the sense that I think social media has made everybody more self-aware.
So as a journalist, when I go out in my other job for the Atlantic, going and
interviewing people, it's such a delight when you meet somebody who is just like
living their life unselfconsciously and telling you things rather than
what I think lots of us end up doing now, which is feeling that we're
acting constantly as our own PR firm.
Yeah.
Applause: And so I
Helen: think that there are, let's be honest, no shortage of
massive bastards still around.
Applause: Yeah.
Helen: But unfortunately, they tend to be more protected by
walls or boringly bastard.
Do you know what I mean?
there's, I quite feel quite nostalgic for the era of the,
Andy: Extreme wealth and eccentricity obviously go together
very neatly, and maybe the era is slightly coming to a close where.
It's an aspirational thing to own a newspaper for example.
Adam: that's where we've lost the press proprietors.
the other one that I really missed in the street shame pages is Richard Desmond when
he was in charge of the Daily Express.
and there was this glorious thing, Francis Wehow I worked with, and I,
we would do, it was a very standard kind of format to stories where the
express would do some sort of, or, and Weum who had a column in the Express
would do some formulating thing about the morals of society and disgusting
BBC allowing swearing and smart on.
And we'd just go straight to the, the television X listings, which
was the pornographic channel that Richard Desmond owned at the time,
the proprietor of the Daily Express.
And there was France and I were quite ready to say, I'm looking at porn
and, this website will come.
But it was, he was one of those really enormous characters.
And I do feel we've lost, yeah.
A lot of, we have.
It has to be said.
We have still got Yevgeni Leviev.
That's true.
And he is
Andy: magnificent.
Copy the last of the new.
Entry of that field, Yeah.
And I think if you are that, if you are, if you're so wealthy, it's a
similar thing to Elon Musk maybe, where you're so wealthy, you'll.
You are no, you pass through being protected by balls because
you're just putting out there the maddest possible stuff.
You can,
Helen: there's also a trend, which is that the most free you can
possibly be as somebody who can say anything without any consequences.
And no one can ask you to take any responsibility.
And that I think is the, Trumpist appeal in the us There is like
a zone on the other side of cancellation where it's just no one.
Can stop you.
This is what power looks like.
The power looks like sitting all day scrolling on your phone, on
the loo, going, oh wow, the Mao, and like the, as if that's what
Alexander the great aspired to.
But, I, yeah, I, just think that, a magazine like Private Eye, I think it
helps when you've got a vivid enemy.
Yeah.
Is an encapsulation of bullying power and private eye stands up to it.
And that's how I think people want somebody to stand up to the bullies.
Yeah.
And, that's what, when journalism is, campaigning.
Journalism is good.
It does, it's a, it's and, sometimes it stands up to them by
blowing a raspberry in their face.
It just making them look ridiculous.
Adam: Yeah.
Yeah.
The problem is, it, the great thing is when they get obsessive about it,
fired, nicked our rubbish, didn't he?
Yeah.
He literally had someone stealing the rubbish from the office.
Yes.
So that he could print it in his rival to us, which was called punch at the time.
yeah.
Yes.
I
Helen: remember you saying to me that nothing in was more
annoying to you than the fact that Rupert Murt doesn't really care.
Ian: No.
It's incredibly offensive of him to sit there week after week.
Just ignoring.
Yeah.
These jokes, which I find rude, many of which he's seen many times now, must have
Applause: really annoyed him,
Ian: yes.
'cause they have, they've had a good run.
Yeah.
but again, he's, he's still terribly good copy.
Yeah.
partly 'cause he's discovered the secret of eternal life,
which is good, as a press baron.
Andy: is there a future for a print magazine in a digital world?
Sorry to, make things somber.
If he says no, now we're really
Helen: mean TikTok only.
Ian: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think there is, yes, obviously.
I, believe in print, private Eye now sells more copies than we did 20 years ago.
I was editor then as well, so I can't blame the useless editor.
there is something magic about print, which I believe in.
I believe in broad sheets, broadcasting, again, we, have 50 cartoons now, about
in every issue, which I ramped up during, the pandemic just on the grounds that.
A people need, something to laugh at.
but b, they are so brilliant and they don't work anywhere else.
You need to see them, you need to see them on the page, and they're fabulous.
so people say, oh, you are very niche and you've failed to go digital and.
all those other accusations, but we are still there.
our circulation now is bigger than most sort of newspapers.
Helen: I think that's the thing.
I don't think there is necessarily a future for the daily newspaper
that's printed on newsprint and is at the petrol station four court that
doesn't necessarily fit into people's.
Lives.
The thing I most appreciate about a magazine is that it, you can finish it.
Andy: Yeah.
Helen: And I think that is the experience that maybe people want,
I dunno about you, but I feel very burned out by doom scrolling.
And there is, again, like you say, the other thing about a
magazine is it has, a grammar and a rhythm to it that is familiar.
when you read Private Eye.
Street of shame is always gonna be here.
And then you get the jokes and then there's In The Back and, maybe you
don't read all of it, but you know that there's a kind of, somebody has sat down
with all the information in the world that week and said, here's the bit of
it that we think you should look at.
Ian: the, but people now talk about, curated news and I just
think, doesn't that mean edited?
Yeah.
and the whole idea of, oh, we've got all this thing and we curate, that's
Adam: just.
Choosing stuff.
I have a lot of conversations with obviously journalists on other papers,
and the big thing at the moment, the digital stuff is they say, what's really
taking off is we're getting people to subscribe to newsletters and it's the best
of the day's headlines and the stories.
And we put them together and we send them out in a newsletter every morning.
It's... you've invented the newspaper, that's what you've done!
Andy: But that is a thing.
there's a, the website Substack where people write their own newsletters.
you do a Substack, I, and there's a, it's a bit like sort
of 17th century Pamphleteer.
You're getting a strong sense of the person who's behind it, what
they're choosing to prioritize, Oh.
I think people seem to like that a lot.
Helen: That is, and the podcasts Fair, which again, is about very strong
personalities, it will remind you nothing so much of a sort of like Alexander
Pope writing some anonymous pamphlet about how his great rivals got syphilis.
that's, very much the tone of lots of those podcasts.
So I think human nature doesn't change all of your
Andy: substack and it's, it's
Helen: really useful.
My substack is entirely about which of my enemy secretly have syphilis.
Yes.
But I do think an ongoing account,
Adam: I think one of the secrets is that Private Eye hit on this
formula of sometimes quite hardcore and depressing kind of new stuff.
But if you look just slightly to the right, there's gonna be a
cartoon that's gonna make you laugh.
And the relationship, between the hacks and the cartoonist is, always good.
'cause we appreciate the cartoons and the cartoonists appreciate
that we give them nice sort of gray frame around them that we sets.
Ian: cartoonists depend on journalists, particularly the topical cartoonists, to
give them an angle, to find things out.
it's, very interdependent.
yes, the news is depressing, but it isn't depressing.
If you look at it this way and that, that is the idea,
Andy: just to keep with other publications and other organizations.
So reach is, newspapers stable is having a very hard time.
The Telegraph is completely in limbo and can't be sold to anyone.
Is the British media in general in a healthy state right now?
No.
Adam: Certainly a lot newspaper, media.
bits.
the, weird thing about the Telegraph is the telegraph was making enormous
amounts of money, which is why, that fund backed by the UAE were willing to pay.
they overpaid massively 600 million for it.
But there is still money to be made.
Andy: No, but not the question, is it not, is it making lots of money?
Is it in a healthy state?
Adam: Nobody needs to be,
Andy: I'm speaking as a working journalist in terms of
Adam: journalists getting paid is quite important.
Yeah.
you could go back over.
We, we literally declared the death of journalism a few issues
ago in street of shame, didn't we?
And just put a black Yeah, I was away particularly depressed that week.
I think a blackboard board around the pages, but actually I think you could
probably go back through most of the 63 years or whatever we're at now, of the
eye and, conclude that that, everything pretty awful at any of those times.
Helen: There's a lot of slop around now if you look about 50 years ago there was,
the information was much more tightly controlled and that meant that there
was a sense of a shared culture and a shared kind of set of conversations
that had its own problems, not least at the kind of people who, were in
charge of what those conversations were all pretty much looked the same.
Yeah.
Things are now much more rancorous again, I do think it's a bit more like the 18th
century now, like it is just more people shouting at each other often in vile ways.
Riddled with misinformation, but that does mean that there's
a certain kind of liveliness.
To the conversation and actually for all the, yeah, I think we've talked a lot in
the magazine about the kind of decline in some of those traditional newspapers.
There are some real success stories of things that have started up in
the last five or 10 years that are commissioning stuff, paying journalists,
like how unheard the critic politics, Joe, as we say, all the things on,
Substack, and, huge number of the news agent's podcast has managed to make
its case as an independent format.
There are still lots of people doing.
Journalism, but just the model has really changed the idea of having
a big warehouse where you have.
You keep, I worked at the Daily Mail for a long time, so you keep 500 people captive
and miserable and make them produce news.
That was the daily mails model.
I think that has ended and, it things now tend to be smaller and more nimble.
There are more kind of skiffs and fewer, tankers basically.
Adam: But what I would say that's happening on a smaller scale.
On a bigger scale, the really odd thing that newspapers have done as
they've gone more and more digital is that they all seem to be going
after that same clickbait market.
most, oh, I'm not gonna bang on about reach 'cause I write
about 'em every single fortnight.
But the male at the moment, had two very distinctive, very, successful things.
It had the Daily Mail newspaper, which was kind of Paul Dakers vision of the world,
which a lot of people went along with.
And it had the Mail Online, which was Sidebar Of Shame and bikini photos
and, on, all that kind of thing.
And actually they've put them together now and, that both of those I think, have
suffered in that process and just become slightly worse versions of themselves.
And it seems very odds to me that, if you go back 20 years, the telegraph was
absolutely the paper of kind of people who wore glees and barber jackets and
green wellies and that was their audience.
The mail was.
Which had, its very kind of, a more, more suburban, not quite
as well off kind of thing, but very well defined kind of market.
Yeah.
And in the way they've all gone, oh, we've gotta go online,
we've gotta appeal to everyone.
They've ended up, none of them really appealing to anyone.
And you end up with them just pumping out this sort of, it's not even,
it's not even click back that's attempting to be news anymore.
the, big success story at the moment on the, daily mirror as, Far as their
bosses are concerned is cleaning hacks.
And you think, it's literally like this, amazing product.
We'll clean your sink.
and this, is what's getting big, hits on their websites.
And this is the paper that 40 years ago was Paul Foot's paper.
John Pilger was on there reporting from the killing Fields in Cambodia.
You just think, really?
Yeah,
Andy: really that's where we're going with this you can't go back
to the fifties where eight in 10 people bought a daily newspaper.
Those days are not coming back.
And I think in terms of.
informing an entire population, which is my benchmark, is not in a healthy state.
You, it is all very well having sub substack writers who, might
have some thousands of subscribers, but in terms of telling like 70
million people what's going on.
So they're informed to make decisions and exposing scandals,
for those 70 million people.
Ian: But, and then this is the impetus from.
Social media, isn't it to say don't trust the mainstream media.
Trust me in my bedroom.
the problem about.
British papers trying to cater for an American audience, partly
'cause there's more money there.
So they go online and the advertising and the cliques come from men in
Nebraska, , whose interests aren't the same as people in Guilford.
which is why you get into the culture wars.
And they're saying, do you know what's happening in Canadian
mixed women's hockey team?
No, I don't.
I really don't.
And that sort of thing seems to me we just.
It just moves over.
So you get what are essentially American debates and you look at it
in your paper and you think, what?
What?
Why is this in here?
Elon Musk says, most of Britain is a no-go zone.
If you go out of your house, you'll be attacked by women in hijabs with
machine guns retweeted in Britain.
Yes.
That's what's
Andy: happening here.
Just go outside.
on the, like the New York Times as well, they seem to love the idea
of Britain as this like drizzly plague, riddled, like broth island.
How was you, right for the Atlantic as well?
It's just this miserable, like they seem to get a real kick out of it.
Why?
Why do they like that?
Helen: I think it's a bit like the way that now there are only certain
ethnicities you're allowed to have as villains, and for them, they're still
allowed to be mean about Britain.
Because in their minds, Britain is the kind of origin country that's very
rich and riddled with aristocrats.
So they, there's a sort of weird twin effect about the fact that they,
basically, the British shows that like middle America consumes are
the great British Bake off, right?
Downton Abbey and the Crown.
and then the social media view of Britain is, as you say, creeping Sharia
and And so they, they believe that the, basically that Britain is high click
castle, but surrounded entirely by people in hijab stabbing each other.
It's really, it, is really fascinating.
Yeah.
But it is this idea that this is one of the few places that you're allowed to look
down your nose at if you're an American.
Andy: Wow.
Helen: And I think that the.
The verse happens here.
You have people who are very snooty about Americans as if they're all used
car deals men in Pensacola, right?
As if that is, by a, by word for being uncultured.
And I think that there's a feeling that we're both on the same playing
field and therefore we're allowed to be mean about each other.
And the really tragic thing is there's so much richer than us.
It's just so much richer than us.
I can't even begin to tell you.
You walk through an American car park and the cars are three
times the value of cars here.
the houses are three times bigger.
But nonetheless, there is this belief that in some way, having a go at
Britain's and saying that they've got bad teeth and live in a swamp.
New York Times actually referred to the concept of living being swamps
in Britain, that this is punching up.
It's fast.
It's completely fascinating, but you're exactly right, Ian, about.
America Brain.
Carla Denny of the Greens was actually saying, why is out here
people talking about gender, when the price of eggs has gone up?
The price of eggs has not gone up in Britain.
It's gone up massively in the US because of a huge bird flu outbreak.
so what you are getting is you are getting British politicians who are.
and this is clearly I, this was the first time I'd really seen it on the left.
I knew it was happening on the right.
Who are getting their talking points from not just Fox News, but the kind of online
sphere around it, and then just trying to drag those and map them onto Britain.
Andy: Just quickly on the swamps thing, is it possible they're talking about f.
So I'm very well aware that you have drained them and I am
looking forward to going to the, I
Helen: really think you should go to Florida and, go, this is a
charming little fe we've got here.
There all these little alligators in the fe.
Adam: Can I ask you a question in about subscription cancellations?
Yeah.
Because when you do one of those covers or those cartoons and we
get lots and loads of, and cancel my subscription immediately.
Yeah.
Do they actually cancel their subscriptions?
Ian: the data isn't clear.
There is a certain suggestion that they don't cancel before the next issue in
the hope that their letters are in.
Then they frame that one and put it on the, in the downstairs, Lou?
Yeah.
the Boris Johnson, legacy cover, which was just a picture
of a huge overflowing toilet.
Applause: Yeah.
Ian: created quite a lot of trouble.
A lot of news agents wouldn't sell it, and a lot of our readers were really
cross, but again, They threatened vast amounts of cancer subscriptions,
but they didn't materialize.
the one about Gaza recently, we put a thing on there saying, this is a warning.
There may be some Chris criticism who is Israel in this magazine, and huge
number of people said they would cancel.
But then looking back on it, I just think it was a statement of the obvious.
An understatement.
Andy: we'll come to of these questions really shortly, But just a very quick one.
How do I get my letter into private eye?
I'm speaking as a subscriber here, not as a hack.
what's the policy on what letters get in and what don't?
Ian: Are they interesting?
are they funny?
have we got something wrong?
do I need to correct this?
is this just a point of view?
I didn't like this.
Sometimes that's funny.
Sometimes it's not.
it's a bit arbitrary.
is the truth 'cause we get an awful lot of letters.
I get quite a lot from Ev, Yev, Guinea.
Lev.
but then they're not addressed dearer either?
No.
You went into
Helen: a grandfather off with him?
I think I did.
The only times it's ever happened.
A grandfather.
What did, your grandfather do?
Ian: Yes.
his was in Stalin's cabinet.
Helen: Yeah.
Ian: which I suggested meant he was a bit Russian.
Bit Soviet.
Dare you.
Yeah.
Anyway, he got very, cross with that.
and I think being referred to as Lord Lover Duck,
Applause: I think
Ian: child, it's not respectful,
Andy: is it?
let's, have a really quick one this just in case you've got one of
these that you think is, important.
What's the biggest story in Britain like right now that's not
getting the attention it deserves?
The new post office.
Adam: Oh God.
I'd have to say T side.
And I know we've been banging on Bennett forever, but and there are a few admiral
exceptions of people who've caught onto that story, but that's, that I really
feel is one that's gonna run and run.
It's got the smack of those seventies scandals, the T down Smith and
Paulton and stuff about it, hasn't it?
Helen: I'm just surprised by the fact that there are so many lying around
on the floor waiting to be picked up.
I was reading about in the Times today about the fact that businesses
have been offered all these tax credits by the government to do AI
research and development, and it's worth billions and Let me shock you.
Sometimes when people do AI research, it's not the highest quality, it's them
pissing about with Google, basically, and I just thought, I bet you could
go and find out incredible examples of that program being defrauded in
the way that the Covid bounced back loan program was defrauded in the way
that you have Michelle Monde and PPE.
I think one of the things I love about Richard Brooks who did the T side is that
he's just got an incredible appetite for.
Stories of financial fraud, which are so hard to bring to life.
And, so few journalists have the kind of tenacity to do them
and the ability to go and sit.
he went up to D side and poured through accounts.
And I just think that, so there is such a problem about the fact
that so many scandals in Britain are essentially quite boring.
I think Ben Gold Egger once said they're projected by a
tedium shield three miles thick.
And I think that's really troublesome, like when it's, when there's a scandal,
it involves vivid personalities.
Those can involve people suing you and that's one different type of problem.
But something like offshore tax havens is another different type of problem
to tell that story in journalism 'cause it's lots of people you've never heard
of stealing large amounts of money.
Through very boring and complicated means they're paying a lot to, how
the hell do you hold that to account?
And those are the stories that I think are probably undercovered,
those kind of financial frauds where it's not one amazing crook,
it's just some low rent people.
Just creaming money out of our, yeah.
Off the, that could be used to pay for our roads and schools, essentially.
Yeah.
Ian: I agree with all that.
I think they're all there.
But I think the, lobbying thing, again, we've got a lot of very good, younger
journalists who are very, they're, still shocked at the fact that a
company invites a said MP to come to some jolly, to come some freebie, and
they literally ask a question about it.
Yeah, two weeks later in the House of Commons, they stand up and they deliver.
Yeah.
And I'm older than, but I still find that shocking.
someone, invites, a minister or a junior minister to their event.
And, the younger journalists say, I presume there was a workers
representative there and a member of the trade unions and, uk No, there wasn't.
No, there was just the drinks company.
And the minister and the gambling representative and the mp and
no one else that's lobbying.
Yeah.
and it's partly why the lay party did so badly early on, you just
thought, cause my colleagues and I get dragged in front of select committees
occasionally and say things like, why couldn't mps not have a second job?
They all go, oh, for God's sake.
and could they not accept the tickets?
Maybe could, they buy them, pay for their own pay data tickets and
Adam: boxes at Wimbledon, that sort of thing,
Ian: or not go,
Andy: Anyway, this is terribly shocking.
Oh, that's a nice note to another capacity to remain shocked.
I think it's important we should come to some audience questions now.
Yes.
We've got, just over five minutes left, I'll do a sweep across the
room, so we've got one over here.
Audience: Is there a story that you've not been able to
publish but you do know is true?
And if so, what is it?
Andy: And I remind you we're live streaming this at the moment.
Applause: Yeah.
Ian: No.
If I absolutely think a story's true, it's in there.
and it's really flattering that people think we've got a huge bank of stuff.
we haven't, we getting press on Monday.
I
Helen: think that, yeah, if you've got one, do, yeah.
I think there's a related thing, which is a question that we all
face now, which is how much should you report on misinformation?
So there's been, for example, all over the kind of right wing internet
sphere, there is a, this lurid suggestion that Ki Star is having
an affair with Lord Dally, right?
That he hasn't actually just taken money from.
Absolutely zero basis to this.
Absolutely.
And they seem to be based on faked pictures.
And the point about it is, actually in this day and age, if you found out that
a politician was having a gay affair, poor people would be a bit like Oh,
Andy: good for him.
Helen: Yeah.
Yeah.
He never looked like a snappy dress, so I didn't know he had it in him.
but it's, it's the sense that like they're keeping something from us.
And actually it's very hard to know as a journalist how to deal with that.
I'm not.
The reason we're not reporting that story is not because we're all in
a cozy club where we sit together.
It's just because it's bollocks.
But how do you deal with that?
Because all the way through.
We've had this assumption that you shouldn't amplify
this misinformation, right?
You shouldn't give credence to false things by reporting
'em and talking about them.
That can be really damaging.
But you get to these stages where this stuff is coming up in focus groups, right?
This is happening.
Normal voters who aren't that engaged with the news are
hearing about this kind of stuff.
Ahead of the riots.
This was a huge problem.
And so there's a really difficult decision to make.
we're not sitting on stories that we know to be true.
We're sitting on lots of stories that we know not to be true, and
trying to think how responsibly to communicate that information to people.
That's actually the really difficult thing now, I think.
Yeah, and
Andy: I would just add to that, there, there, are sometimes details that you
would really like to get into stories, but for legal reasons you can't and a
story might appear looking a bit opaque.
And there, there is sometimes.
Even more to it than, than you've read, but that's, yeah, it's not, being,
and there, there are basic laws of
Ian: contempt, which, you know.
Yeah.
Tommy Robinson hasn't quite got his head round, which is about ongoing, cases and
that may, and there was a brief period of super injunctions and many of which
we did try and challenge and again.
You're in any doubt whether we're wasting your money, we are, by
spending it on legal fees to try and overturn these things.
but again, Adam had, a list of them and they are very, few now, aren't they?
Extremely few, yeah.
In
Adam: terms of super injunction, none that I know of going on at the moment.
Ian: See, again, but I would say
Adam: that about 80% of my job as a hack on private eye is,
establishing that stories aren't true.
And the 20% always going.
And I would have to say at this point I was asking you that question about how
the conversations goes with lawyers.
'cause I've been sat in on a few of those and I have to say if he in syncs
something is true, whatever the lawyer is saying, it does tend to go in.
In the safest form it can and properly,
Ian: Yeah.
Moderated.
Andy: Let's go into our last question here
Audience: in terms of the private eye lunches.
What are some of your most memorable moments over your time
as editor and just wider, any, you guys have been to them as well.
So
Helen: for anybody who doesn't know the Private Eye Lunch is a
tradition of fortnightly, gatherings used to Where did you start?
Was coaching horses, photos.
Coaching
Adam: horses originally.
Yeah.
Which was a, horrible pub that we used to hang around in with horrible food.
She was added to its charm, didn't it?
Helen: And then it moves on.
It served a yogurt cherry soup as a, what was it?
It was, do you remember that?
That was the worst thing I've ever take.
what, apart from, yeah.
Ian: Okay.
The food's not the main issue
Helen: now.
It's, now it's lovely.
Ian: The,
point is that we invite.
influential people and journalists and, other people who tell
us things and, inform us.
And usually this is on a fairly gentle, gossipy, bantering nature, but sometimes
it just falls right in your lap.
We invited John Hemming, who was a liberal mp, to lunch and.
It'd be fair to say he, he did hit the booze fairly heavily and he turned to me
in front of a table full of journalists and he says, oh, I'm in terrible trouble.
And, my girlfriend's pregnant and I haven't told my wife.
This was before.
The starters of it was just,
you've never seen a dash for the.
Andy: Superb.
there's one question from the stream, which I thought I'd just throw in.
What should we all be doing to get more people reading private high?
Buy them a subscription?
Yeah.
Helen: that's route one, but it does all work.
Probably,
Ian: spread the word.
it's still incredibly good value.
you get 50 cartoons, which are incredibly funny, even if you don't
wanna read the stuff around them.
Helen: the other thing I would say that I never realized was a
thing that you can do, but you can often contact the cartoonist
and ask them to buy the original.
And they loved it.
I've got the private, I did a first draft of difficult women, which is, my
poor husband who made me a lot of tea.
Me going, oh, can I have coffee instead?
but I, and I got, and I've got the original for that and it's in my
house at home and it's really, it's it's just a really lovely moment.
And I know that, as you say, there's a kind of cottage industry of
redrawing them in certain cases.
But there are like that, that a bit about valuing the stuff
that's in the mag, I think.
And, every year there are Christmas cards and things like that.
So the merch, I would also say is a way of supporting private line.
I've got David
Adam: Ziggy Green's seen and heard, thing that he did when he came down
to the phone hacking trial where I spent eight months and he came in for
one morning and just sketched away and did something far better than any
of my s that's in a frame on my wall.
Weirdly, weirdly, no one's ever asked me to write out one of my journalistic
stories and send, verse from that I
Ian: should say that.
You can't always get the original from the cartoonist.
one of our cartoonists did a rather beautiful drawing, of Crisp Be odi, who
was, shorting the pound during Brexit.
and he drew a picture of Crisp Be odi.
basically, shafting Britain and Oie rang up and said, I love your work.
I'd like to buy the cartoon.
He cast his phone back saying, you can't, I don't admire your work.
Andy: Superb.
I think on that note, I'm so sorry, but we're outta time.
We gotta bring it to a close.
The very final question, will the four of you be signing books after this event?
Yes, we will.
Any books see there?
Each other's, anyone else's is fine.
We'll sign this.
Absolutely.
that brings to a close the first incident of page 94 live.
Thank you so much to all of you for being here.
Thank you for those of you streaming, and thank you for listening at home.
Goodbye.
Thank you.