Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
This is an extremely exciting one.
Behind me there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of brilliant journalists,
of whom six have been shortlisted for this year's Paul Foot Award,
in memory of the late, great campaigning journalist, Paul Foot.
We're about to find out which of those journalists has won this
year's award, so without further ado, over to the magazine's editor, Ian
Hislop
it, it's
been a very, very bizarre year, and journalism must feel this.
The implosion of the Labour Party, war in the Middle East, the rise of right-wing
parties, a toxic split, um, in the British public, and an economic crisis.
Looking
back
at the stuff
Paul wrote for Private Eye, I coped with all of this.
None of it would've surprised him.
And the important thing about Paul is that he would not have despaired.
Um, particularly not about journalism.
Paul was, um, for those who don't really know
and
imagine he was writing about Boer War,
um,
uh, he, uh, worked for a long time for the Daily Mirror and for Private Eye, and
the first thing I did when I was editor was, um, get him back, um, on the team.
He was a great friend of Richard Ingrams, um, and, uh, Christopher Booker.
They were at s- all at and they were that early Private Eye team.
What Paul b- um, brought was
the focus on journalism.
Uh, if much he wrote, uh, about Lockerbie, for example, um, the, uh, uh, um, air
crash and then the, um, the, the fake terrorism story and the consequent
fallout.
The infected
blood scandal,
Paul wrote about that.
There's yet another, uh, review of it last week.
None of this goes away.
Miscarriages.
Um, I
w- was reading his, report, the arms to Iraq.
Would you believe it?
Britain was exporting arms to a Middle East country and not
admitting it.
Certainly wouldn't happen now.
Um, uh, Jonathan Aitken, um, campaign against him, um, uh,
again, which ended with a win.
sword of justice was blunted, um, and, uh,
Aitken, um,
had to,
um, apologize, give up, and
then he went to jail.
Um, the great thing
about Paul, though, took
all this stuff incredibly
seriously,
but he wanted journalism to be fun and for it to be
enjoyable and life-enhancing.
And I
remember with Jonathan Aitken, we were… He'd sued us.
We were
in serious trouble.
and I said, "I'm thinking of putting in a fake apology."
Paul thought was funny and said,
" Why don't you put it in?"
We did put it in.
Jonathan Aitken didn't think it was funny.
Uh, he renewed a claim for exemplary
damages,
which he may well have got.
I don't remember the
end of the
story.
Um,
the
point of
the
point
of the story, um,
i-
is
that,
uh, the great thing about Paul, and it's the
reason the prize is named after him, is he was passionate about journalism,
but he wanted it to be entertaining, and he knew that to get people to read
a story, particularly a story of any length, it had to be entertaining,
accessible,
um, and worth reading.
And Paul, he could make you sad, he could make you furious, he could
make make you care, quite difficult, um, nowadays, and particularly
when he was presenting
his stuff to me.
So what
I'm going to
do is announce the winner, invite them to come up and get their check, and then
invite all of the
people on the shortlist.
So this is the moment.
The Pulitzter Awards 2026 goes to Peter Geoghegan and Kadifa
Shariff
So here we are with the winner of this year's Paul Foot Award, Peter Geoghegan.
Congratulations, Peter.
Thank you very much, Andy.
Uh, would you like to thank, uh, God, the Academy?
I'd
like to thank, you know…
Well, I w- I'd like to thank all the wonderful people I worked
with to tell these stories.
First and foremost, someone who's not here, which is Khadija Sharief, who was
my coauthor with so many of these pieces.
If it wasn't for Khadija, this story wouldn't, it would never have been told,
and certainly not in the way it was told.
So that was absolutely
couldn't have happened
otherwise.
And obviously, a huge thanks to everybody at Private Eye and all
the judges and everybody else who took the time to go through
a story like
that, who also listened to a contribution from…
You know, we're a newsletter.
You know, we're a small website.
There's only three of us.
To
be able
to punch at the same level as some of these incredible stories
is just, yeah, it's phenomenal.
Yeah.
Um, nothing for Keir Starmer in your thanks, without whom?
Well, maybe a
small thanks to Josh Simons, without
whom we wouldn't be, you
know…
I wouldn't be standing
here.
The voters of Makerfield wouldn't be going to the
polls in a couple of weeks' time.
So
maybe it's all down to Josh.
Maybe.
Now, the other thing we should say, which we didn't say when we first interviewed
you, this is not your first time on the shortlist for the Paul Foot Award.
It's time number…
It's-
It's time number three.
Time number
three.
So
I was… Yeah, I, I think I'm…
My experience of the Paul Foot Awards is a good example of,
you know,
fail and fail better, uh,
as, as
my compatriot Samuel Beckett once
said.
Uh, back in, I think, 2018, maybe 2019, myself and my colleague
Jenna Corduroy were longlisted for
an investigation we did into Arron
Banks.
Whatever happened to him?
Oh, actually, yes.
Yeah,
you know, who
would have known?
Um, and a few years later, we were shortlisted, myself and Jenna and
Lucas Amey were shortlisted for an
investigation into the Cabinet Office's Freedom of Information clearing house,
how they were… You might remember that story, how they were suppressing FOIs
from journalists, campaigners and others.
Yeah.
And also that year, I
was also
shortlisted for the Guardian
as part of their investigations I've been doing with them into COVID corruption and
PPE lanes, as people might remember as
well, so.
Your fourth time on the shortlist, really.
Yeah, so fourth
time lucky.
There we go.
This shows the po- importance of perseverance in journalism.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, congratulations again, Peter.
It's a terrific
story.
We'll find out the results very soon in a wider sense.
Yeah.
Thank you very much, Andy.
Thank you.
Okay.
That's it for this year's Paul Foot Award.
We'll be back in a year with another one, and we'll be back tomorrow
with another regular episode of the
Private
Eye podcast, recorded from the Hay Festival.
Bye
for now.