Maisie: Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.

Andy: Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Eye's Studio with Helen

Lewis, Ian Hislop and Adam Macqueen.

This is your summer special.

Very exciting.

It's silly season there'll be no news on.

So we thought we'd record a special episode,

optimistic with some beach reading for you.

And we thought we, we did an episode last year, which was all about,

political memoirs and the best political memoirs there ever were.

And, this time we thought, Private Eye, let's talk about journalism.

So we're gonna suggest some of the best books about journalism

that have ever been written.

Starting with Ian.

we've, each chosen a couple of books basically.

So Ian, what's your first choice?

Ian: my first choice is the Faber Book of Reportage, edited by Professor John Carey.

As you can imagine, it's a big beach read as you wander along, the

front, you'll see almost everyone reading it on their deck chairs.

but don't be put off.

it is a brilliant collection of eyewitness accounts of reportage from

a couple of a hundred BC till now.

So it's got top hacks like th acidities and sort of pieces

about the death of Socrates.

This is in the early section.

It goes all the way up, but it is, it's absolutely extraordinary.

It's, first person news.

It's a survivor from the Titanic.

It's someone describing the charge of the light brigade,

the Spanish Conquest of Mexico.

A written account, from one of the soldiers.

It's the most extraordinary, I think, collection of stuff.

And I'm making it sound very heavy on walls, and disasters,

and there's a lot of that.

But he's actually got some very, odd, strange pieces about, ordinary

human activity, about crops, about food, about, the way people dress.

And it's beautifully put together, but it's all framed because Kerry,

this is a great, critic and analyst and he said that with the end of

religion as a shared narrative, what people have moved towards is.

Current events.

world events as something that can be shared.

and it's a very convincing, it's a very, good preface apart from anything else.

but it's very upbeat about journalism, which not all of the books, my, my other

choice is very rude about journalism.

Okay.

but we can get onto that later.

But he actually says in, the introduction that reportage this, wave of confronting

reality, prevents people escaping reality.

it reminds people what is actually happening.

And he says it changes its readers, it educates their sympathies and it

limits their capacity for the inhuman.

you get everything.

You get the holocaust, you get all of it, inside this collection,

and it's, very uplifting.

Helen: growing up, did you have a piece of journalism that made

you want to become a journalist?

Ian: That's a really good question.

Helen: But what did you grow up reading

Ian: a lot of fiction,

Helen: right?

I thought we were,

Ian: this

Helen: is,

Adam: was there a family paper?

Where did you, do you, did your mom and dad take a particular paper?

Ian: we lived abroad a lot.

I'm the South China Morning post.

I read a lot of, for a while we were in Hong Kong.

I don't remember the newspapers in either Ku eight Saudi or Nigeria.

but I'm sure they were there.

But at school, as soon as I was sent back to school in England,

the school had, a row of wooden lectins with all the papers laid out.

this is prep school onwards.

All, all the papers, tabloids as well, the whole one Don't be ridiculous.

What sort of school they wanted your

Adam: boys reading?

Yes.

Yeah.

Ian: So there was the Times of the Telegraph and the Manchester Guardian

as it probably was when I was at school.

so no, I remember the thrill of reading papers very, early.

I think what, why I love this book so much and I keep giving it to young relatives

and people who are going into journalism saying, this is just about being there

and reporting what happened as opposed to your take on it or how you feel

about it, or it's a genuine curiosity

Andy: Yeah.

Ian: About the world and how it is.

Andy: Yeah.

And it's that kind of, that, that theory of journalism.

I think this might be in, is it Nick Davies Flat Earth News?

The idea there is a sort of core iron ball of actual event, and then you get

people who were at the event, and that's, they're the closest you can possibly get.

That is the first proper version of news.

Then you get the analysis, then you get another layer, and

then eventually you get, and

Adam: then you get endless opinion pieces.

You get

Andy: columnists,

Adam: I reckon about stuff.

Andy: Columnists are like Pluto in this universe.

it's a really nice idea.

Let's go onto another book.

Adam, what's your first one?

Adam: Yeah, tabloid, fun merchant over here on the Streets of Shame.

I have gone for a, a really, one of my favourite books, it really is Tickle

the Public 100 Years of the Popular Press by Matthew Engel, the Rea.

as name suggests it takes you over an entire century of the press, but it was

published in 1996, so it's coming from a completely different world to one

we found ourselves in, 30 years later.

which is really interesting.

the comparisons he makes all the way through, it tells you the story

basically of his thesis is that A newspaper comes in, it undercuts the

competition by going essentially cheaper.

which is the key to it.

So The Telegraph comes in and is the, one penny paper, whereas at

the Times cost two p at the time.

but also in lowering the expectations of, of its audience.

So he is just saying what it readers want is something a bit, a bit more, fun

and fruity than, what came before it.

So he goes through, the, Daily Mail era, the Daily Express era takes us

right up to the, the Sun and which we're gonna be talking about a bit

later on with my, second choice in the, 1980s when on that real kind

of mad period of, tabloid excess.

but the comparisons as I say that he makes then, 'cause he's talking

about the telegraph these days being a, very, respectable paper.

That's, there's still, on page three you're gonna get some stuff from the

divorce courts and the scandal stuff, but dressed up in a broad sheet kind of

way so that we can pretend we're being respectable whilst dropping our, toast

and marmalade at the breakfast table.

and that in itself is just a world that's gone now.

Yeah.

And the Telegraph is now this extraordinary kind of reactionary

kind of MAGA fan sheet as we've discussed on here before.

Interestingly, it seems to be slightly swerving back in a slightly more

reasonable direction under the, the new owner's Axle Spring a little bit maybe.

we'll be keeping an eye on that one.

I'm not

Ian: holding my breath.

Helen: they basically think that climate change is real.

That's the big

Adam: they do.

They just don't think we should do anything so much about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That seems to be the conclusion of the recent debate.

Look,

Ian: it's a centre ground position now.

Adam: Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

But 1996, of course, is the absolute height of the power

of the tabloids of the Sun.

and at that point, the, the Daily Mirror, which was then being

edited by Piers Morgan before his, various other, career reinventions.

and it's the year after Tony Blair feels that he's gotta go on pilgrimage

right across the world to, to Australia to address the, the Rupert

Murdoch summer conference thing.

So it, it's, it, as I say, it's just an absolutely, it's now a

separate world as the world of the Pal Mal Gazette in 1895 is.

But there's all sorts of other glorious details in there that just in passing.

Do, you know about mirror dinghies.

Any of you boat people?

No.

So there is a boat called the Mirror Dinghy, which I had always assumed as much

as I thought about at all, was something to do with the symmetrical design of it.

No, it was genuinely, it was produced by the Daily Mirror as a

kit thing, and it was given away.

The instructions were given away with the Daily Mirror in 1961, how you

could build your own affordable boat.

And it came in at just, 63 pounds and, 11 shillings was the cost of you could build

your own boat and go out sailing on it.

So it's very much the daily Mirror kind of being, you know, the, populace.

And why should, only the rich people get to have these, the, these

kind of fun pursuits and things?

Did

Ian: I suspect The Guardian now does it for illegal immigrants

Adam: and there we are, Holister Heath come in the room.

But also things like, he points out that, the reason there are so many leather

band sets of Dickens and charity shops and old, second house shops is that

was a massive, circulation booster war.

They would go newspapers in the 1930s were giving away sort of band sets of dickens

in the way that, if you remember the early naughties, you got a DVD with every Sunday

newspaper, whether you wanted it or not.

Helen: Wall charts, you remember

Adam: Wall charts I was thinking about, yeah, the most bizarre thing,

the War of the Wall charts, which was a bit more high, wasn't it?

The Guardian and Independent

Helen: I think was a, you were

Adam: sort of guardian and it was have all the cows on a wall chart for you.

Helen: I think what ended that though is I think one of the papers

did a, a mushroom and fungi one and that, that you wanted really be very

sure that you've got that right.

I

Andy: know

Adam: what they hadn't

Helen: and they had not.

Yeah.

Adam: One of the things they recommended eating was poisonous.

Do you know what they did to make up for that?

They gave away a free packet of dried pini mushrooms to, all the

readers, which is just no, sorry.

Do not want that.

Not after that, mistake.

One after the

Helen: death

Adam: count that

Helen: I just ate.

Andy: Yeah.

The other thing, it is a brilliant book.

It's a fantastic you recommended when I joined the Eye that I read this book

and I did, and it was so worth doing.

'cause he's just got an amazing turn of phrase as well.

Matthew Eng, he's just a lovely writer.

Yes.

He's

Adam: an absolutely brilliant

Andy: writer

Adam: and he writes it as well in the style of the popular

press of any given time.

So it's very punchy.

Nothing goes on for too long.

It's he quotes a lot.

You've got a lot of kind of, these amazing headlines in there and, direct quotations.

But the thing that really struck me really reading now is quite how contemporary is

in terms of, there's essentially these huge characters who are the kind of press

barrens of the, of, the last century.

So you've got people like, Lord Northcliffe, who was the founder

of the Daily Mail, ends up going spectacularly mad and thinks he's

been poisoned by Belgian ice cream.

Lord Rother, his brother.

and there's a lot of detail in there.

Matthew Engel puts in about his support for fascism, both for Mosley and his

Powell Hitler and going over and doing all those complimentary, interviews

in Beaverbrook as well, who was a man who really probably the first kind of

press lawyer to really just unashamedly use his power to, get what he wanted

rather than try to, have any sort of respectability about reporting the news.

just from making stuff up and trying to change leaders of the

Conservative party at Will all the way.

and Cecil King, of course, who was chairman of the Mirror group and who

brilliantly in the 1960s tried to lead, his own coup against Harold Wilson's

government and depose him essentially.

He's was going to, the plan was for it to be a military thing, and he

tried to recruit Lord Mount Batten and the head of the London Zoo to it,

which is quite an odd set of people.

So it's these fantastic stories, but it's that I just saying

Ian: gorilla warfare.

Adam: But it really reminded me of that way that, there's that, that, phrase that

Stanley Baldwin used about, Beaverbrook, which was, the, "wanting power without

responsibility in the prerogative of the whole lot through the ages." But it's

ing it's exactly the same as the Tech Bros these days as your Zuckerberg's

and your Elon Musks and people who just want have that power are doing it

in effectively what's the equivalent of tabloid newspapers of today, of

taking over communications outlets.

slightly old fashionly, Jeff Bezos actually tried to

buy a newspaper, isn't he?

And, yeah, and hollowed that one out in the Washington Post, but it feels

very contemporary in, in, in that way.

So fully recommended.

Andy: Ah, terrific.

Let's have your

Helen: first

Andy: one, Helen.

Helen: my first one is, not to be so serious today, but,

My choice is Philip Vic's.

We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families,

which is an incredible book from 1998 about the Rwandan genocide.

And he went there and I think did about nine months of reporting

over the course of several years.

And it's just, it comes back to what you were saying, which is the

power of just going somewhere and talking to people whom things have

happened to and writing it down.

And it also sketches the racial history, of the country.

So when it was ruled by the Belgians, they preferred the Tootsie minority.

They used chronology to say that they looked more European.

And that's set up, an incredible se sequence of grievances between the

two, which was found out through the fact that everybody had to carry

an ID card with their race on it,

And this is what eventually bleeds into the genocide, which

is an extraordinary number.

800,000 people killed within a hundred days.

And he says at the very start, it's the quickest that people have been

killed since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It's, at faster pace than the Holocaust and the Second World War.

But the title comes from this absolutely extraordinary letter seven

pastors get herded into a church.

And they send a message to another pastor who they think is gonna save

them, but doesn't, he ends up basically masterminding the, genocide against them.

And it begins our dear leader, how are you?

We wish to be strong in all these problems we're facing.

We wish to inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we will

be killed with our families.

We therefore request you intervene on our behalf and talk with the mayor.

We give honour to you.

And it's just the most you would know if someone told you that you were, there

were people who were trapped in a church waiting to die and they'd send this

incredibly polite letter saying, please have you considered not killing us.

You're a man of God.

You almost wouldn't believe it.

And that story was so powerful that the pastor, they referenced that

he ended up getting put on trial.

he had fledged to America where his son was like a cardiologist.

But yeah, I think it's the most extraordinary book about the power

of journalism and the writing is also really beautiful, which was

quite controversial at the time.

The feeling was you didn't go and write your kind of great literary masterpiece

in the face of all this tragedy.

But it means that it has endured and it exists.

And I, think it's, yeah, I think it's an extraordinary book.

I would, recommend it to anybody.

Andy: Fantastic.

Can you give us the title again?

Helen: We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow we will be killed with our Families.

Brilliant.

By Philip Govi.

Adam: Brilliant.

I think it's a really interesting, in the way that you were

talking about Tage as well.

It's simply the best form of journalism to just tell people stories straightforward

and direct like that, isn't it?

'cause there is a tendency with awful events, particularly ones that happen

overseas of just this, oh deism that you just kinda see things on the news

and think, oh, how awful and numbers of fatalities and numbers of injuries

and things just become large, numbers.

And you really need to get in there and kind of humanise that experience

and point out hammer home to people.

What we know anyway is that these are people like us who live lives

like us and have, families and jobs and, it's not just this,

Helen: I think about it a lot because I think you have to, in, in journalism,

you have to make judgement calls.

what you were talking about, the kind of core of people who've seen something,

they may all have, Russian Monde style, seven different ways of looking at it.

And the power of actually having been there and seen it and engaged with

the material is you go, I'm gonna make a judgement call about what I

think happened here, who I think is in the right, who's in the wrong.

And I have the authority to do that 'cause I was there.

And so often when I read things now I just think, how do you know?

You've just read some other people's columns on this and, then like your

knee jerk tribal thing is activated.

Whereas the duty of the reporter, in my view is to go look at

everything and then go, here's what I think and take it or leave it.

But like I've done the work.

Ian: There's a fabulous piece in the book of Tage about the Battle of

Waterloo, but it's someone going to the battleground the day afterwards and

telling you what it looks like, just telling you about the blood and the body.

And there's no, overarching analysis no.

Oh, did the Prussians arrive too late?

They're saying, this is what a battlefield looks like.

I'm here and I'm telling Jude just this bit.

There's about

Helen: interrupting.

no, because I'm only saying that because it, it reminds me there's a scene exactly

like that in this, where they go to a church where there's been a massacre

and they've left everybody's bodies in situ and it's now been several months.

So they're mostly now skeletons and they're crunching over people's bones.

But the, it gives you the entire situation in Microm, or what it must have been

like to live in Rwanda at that time.

You are literally living alongside people who tried to kill you

among the bodies of your friends.

And he talks about the fact you can see people who got missing limbs or scars.

And that's the thing.

I think we live in a world, luckily in Western Europe that has been

enormously ahistorically peaceful.

And just saying that for the majority of human history, just seeing this

kind of thing was absolutely routine.

And this is what it was.

This is what life was, is extraordinary.

Andy: Yeah.

That sounds terrific.

Helen: Who's your pick?

Andy: Oh, the right prepare for a massive gear change.

Okay.

Because first one I've picked is, Michael FRAs towards the end of the morning.

Helen: Yeah.

Andy: Which is, I think we might all have read it.

I think that,

Adam: I think basically we said who's gonna do it?

Andy: yeah, so Michael Frame is a brilliant comic writer and towards

the end of the morning is 1967.

He had worked at The Observer for several years before that, and it's set in what

we think of as Golden Age Fleet Street.

And it makes clear how shabby and miserable and what

drudgery, lots of Golden Age.

Fleet Street actually was like.

So set in a. A fictional newspaper.

And the hero is, is, his name is Dyson and he works on the kind of

little crunchy bits of the newspaper.

The, the nature notes or the crossword or the all the bits

which are not the glamorous upfront lobby style reporting, all of that.

And, it's at this time where television is massively in the ascendancy,

incredible to remember now, where broadcast TV was the desirable thing.

And a lot of it's about Dyson trying to get on tv.

Basically, he's got an offer to go on and be on one of these discussion

programmes, which is called something like New Perspectives.

It's one of these classic sixties style shows where, blokes

Helen: it be Joan Bakewell sitting in a chair.

Andy: Yeah.

Everyone's smoking co throughout the broadcast.

And, he's been invited on to talk about something, I think

something like race relations.

And it's 'cause he's got a, an Indian neighbour.

it's incredibly flimsy and tenuous and it sort of frame is satirising

the politics of the time as well.

And he, goes on tv, he completely muffs it.

He manages to go on TV and all he does throughout his appearance is whenever

anyone said anything he says, that really is extraordinarily interesting.

And he just says this throughout, it's sort of quarter of an hour.

He just, that's really fascinating.

Wow.

And he even says it at the end of the summing up, the host has

just summed up the whole show.

How

Producer: unlike Chris Mason.

Andy: And, he then is in this fever of like agony the next day thinking,

oh my God, everyone's seen it.

They're gonna think I'm a complete twit.

And it turns out that no one in his life has actually watched the show.

And it's just, it is just, it is wonderful.

it's it's, brilliant and it really evokes that period when the newspapers

were on Fleet Street, when the offices were upstairs and the

printing presses were in the basement.

And it just gets the physical nature of the work, which

has now completely gone from,

Helen: oh yeah, I really miss that.

Do you know what,

Andy: no papers in

Helen: all, it's funny you mention that because my, one of

my alternates that I decided not to do was Pi Morgan the insider.

'cause Jonathan said Ian,

and obviously I immediately flicked to his look from my ear, and

the first thing I read in it is, there's an account of him going on.

Have I got news for you?

And he thinks he's done marvellously well.

And then he just gets all these emails going, you were such a twat last night.

You were terrible.

So I think actually, yeah, the, the hero towards the, and that was the end

Adam: of his TV career, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Helen: But like that, maybe it's preferable not to have

anybody watch you than everybody watch you and think you did.

Oh

Andy: yeah.

But it is that, it's in that time of a medium, the dominant medium is changing.

Helen: Yeah.

Andy: Look at us now filming a poc, filming a podcast.

What is going on?

What's a podcast?

All of that.

there is this anxiety throughout the permeates through the whole novel about,

are there gonna be any jobs in this?

And I think lots of people who go into journalism read

the great journalism novels.

So the, and this is one of them, but they're all, they're often, they

feel antiquated, even though actually lots of the anxieties are, basically

identical to the, the modern ones.

Helen: Yeah.

I dunno if anyone's written a great kind of TikTok novel yet about, I

Andy: don't know.

Adam: anyways, yeah.

What's brilliant about it is all of the characters are just

brilliantly drawn on there.

There's all little comic vignettes.

I always remember the editor who, very unlike our own Dear Leader, creeps

into the office every day trying not to be noticed by everyone and

tries to get to his office and lock the door before anyone can get him.

And there's this sort of deputy who's rushing around doing everything,

but also having a bit of a nervous breakdown on the way, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's, just beautifully done as a comic novel.

It's brilliant.

Andy: That's round one.

But as we promised, we've each picked two great works on

journalism, so let's have some more.

Ian.

Ian: the other great, journalist's favourite novel is Scoop.

and I can't resist choosing it.

it's a cliche, but it, feels closer than towards the end of the morning, which, for

me is situated, in a, a lost world, but not far enough way to be completely lost.

Whereas Scoop seems to me incredibly current.

a journalist is sent to cover, a foreign story entirely by accident.

They think they're sending someone else with a similar name.

The man who runs Nature Notes is sent out to be a foreign reporter.

and it's based on the fact that evil in war, the great comic novelist who wrote

it was sent by the Daily Mail to Abia, and he was there with a man called WF Deeds.

And, WF Deeds was then a very young fledgling reporter, whom the main

character is quite blatantly based on now Deeds went on to become

the editor of the Jelly Telegraph.

He was a huge figure.

And, he was a, well known to the eye.

He used to come in a lot, and I appeared with him a couple of

times on, have I Got News for You?

In which he was a fabulous guest.

He was about 98 by then.

knew all the stories.

And, he had a very slightly sh

shush in everything he said, and part of the eyes early that should off edge stuff.

Oh, really?

About sch

Adam: snake.

Surely,

Ian: surely.

Is that where this comes from?

Did not know that with Bill Deeds and Great, he was.

Again, a very good journalist who was very funny about journalism.

And one of the, the reasons that, I think all journalists like Scoop is,

because it's a laugh at themselves.

It's a fantastic sati on the desire to get the story first.

they, the, the, journalists all stay in one hotel called the Hotel

Liberty, and they don't talk to anyone.

It's the opposite of Brett Portage.

They meet no one except each other.

So they tell each other things, which they then believe, and at one

point all the journalists go off.

'cause there's a story breaking in, the, a big city in Ishma.

this city doesn't exist.

There is no city.

they've invented it.

They all go there a boot because he's fallen in love with some German girl.

Doesn't bother to go and comes across the real story of what's

happening by his own laziness and ineptitude, which is, pretty funny.

Helen: what's the famous, sentence that's from Nature Notes?

Was it flashy footed?

Andy: The questing vol,

Helen: flashy footed through the fen goes the questing vol.

Ian: Yes.

Yeah.

That's what William really wants to write about.

Yeah.

He lives in the middle of nowhere.

He writes about nature.

He has to become a foreign reporter and the foreign reporters are

all, they do all drink a lot.

They do make stuff up.

they're very keen to get the scoop.

and they'll believe anything.

There's one point where it's announced there's Bina Bolshevik Revolution

in Ishmail, because one of the reporters has seen someone with

a big beard, who he's decided is clearly, some sort of, Russian agent.

In fact, he's a, a railway worker with a beard.

but it doesn't matter.

And then there's a Republic Ishmail becomes, Islam, because

apparently there's been a coup.

and the basic story is one family run this African state, they own everything.

The real story is about mining interests and who's going to take them.

and you think.

This story really could have been written yesterday.

and the story about the hacks competing and scrambling, that's, pretty good.

I can't read it without enjoying the feeling that, a lot of the foreign

correspondents I have known in my life fitted pretty easily into this

Adam: genuine conversation I had with the journalist around the time of

the, Madeleine McCann disappearance.

was that you told me about load of them had been sent out to Portugal,

all as you exactly like that, staying in the same hotel in Ulu.

They used to meet in the same bar every, morning, at which point the

Portuguese papers would be brought in.

None of them spoke Portuguese at all.

Ian: No.

Adam: So there'd be one person who came in to translate Alden form.

They would then just file their copy of whatever the Portuguese press

was saying, send it straight back.

Also, no sort of discernment of whether this was the, the,

the Portuguese equivalent of the Sunday sport all the times.

So actually no, no sort of idea of reliability of sources.

And often it would go back to a, in translation or twice translated once,

by the person who came in, who actually spoke Portuguese and once into perfect

daily express language or whatever it was.

and that, that, was the way it was done.

That was the bulk of the reporting that was done.

Helen: I think it's maybe the saddest, one of the saddest things that's happened

in my 20 years in journalism, but when, I was at university, everybody wanted

to be a war con respondent, right?

We read books like War Junkie, war Reporting for Cowers.

that was the model.

Like the Christopher Hitchens turning up in Baghdad with only a sort of bottle

of mouth mouthwash and a Kevlar vest.

That was the figure that, and that's just gone.

there were a huge number of critiques about it that it was all very Brit,

very Eurocentric perspective, but I don't think that's been replaced by

hearing more stories directly from the people in those affected regions.

Yeah.

It's been replaced by nothing,

Ian: by and large.

I think that's particularly true in print and in broadcasting you

get Lindsay Hil, you get least his set, you get Jeremy Bowen.

it's one of the reasons the eye has From Our Own Correspondent section is

that these are people who are there.

and it would be quite nice to hear what they said rather than, what is wanted.

the funny thing in Scoop is Lord Copper, who is essentially Lord

Rothermere or Lord bit of North Cliff and Beaver book, but he's a ridiculous

newspaper magnetic who says, look, I want this war to be fairly short.

there's the rebels and there's the Patriots.

We want some skirmishes, something happens and then the Patriots win.

Is that okay?

And he just quite clearly has told them what to write.

Andy: Yeah.

Helen: and you never say no, do you?

You never say no.

You say up to a point, up to a point.

Copper.

Adam: Yeah.

Andy: Which is wonderful.

I love it.

Helen: Very useful phrase.

Andy: Yeah.

Helen: To a point.

Little Copper.

Andy: Oh, terrific.

Alright, shall we move on to the next one?

Adam: Oh yeah.

More, unbelievable, tales of, appalling behaviour by journalists.

Stick It Up Your Punter by, Peter Dale and Chris Hori, which is the, the uncut

story they call it, of the Sun Newspaper, specifically from, its founding in

the late sixties through to, its kind of, I don't wanna say glory days.

Do I wanna say gory days?

the, age of absolute excess under Kelvin McKenzie through the eighties

and nineties when, as we were saying earlier, it really was a kind of like

huge force in politics and in the country, and selling millions of copies.

Andy: Did you say gory days though?

Adam: Gory days.

Perfect.

yeah, yeah.

Mean it did get, I mean the, the excesses that they go into, there's

an awful lot of fun along the way.

and that which is strangely missing from the tabloids these days.

I think there's very, little kind of, joy in any of the,

Helen: the coverage, some, the star and the lettuce.

Let's trust the lettuce is the light of the kind of,

Andy: yeah.

Helen: That could have been in this book.

Adam: that, that was a kind of last gasp, I think of that kind of thing.

I think the Star has, failed to capitalise on much of that since, 'cause it's

been starved resources by reach PLC.

But hang on, let's not just have me whinging about the state of me.

Come

Andy: on.

Come on.

Let's give us the Sun Son.

The

Helen: 18th.

Is this the one that's got Kelvin Mackenzie firing the, person who does the

astrology by saying, as you will already,

Adam: as you will no doubt, have foreseen?

Yes.

yeah, There's an awful lot of fun like that along the way.

But there's also some really grim stuff.

there's faking interviews with Falkland's, war widows specifically

because the mirror had brought her up and, had the exclusive on it.

So they just made up what she might be saying, partly from the cuttings and

some of it just absolutely fictional.

Kel McKenzie was also the first editor to print a picture of a, a rape victim,

because there was no specific law that said he, he couldn't do that.

So he put it on the front page.

It was a particularly brutal and horrible rate.

There had been an awful lot of coverage about, Hillsborough, of

course was the, the, the really big one in the late eighties.

the disaster at the football ground.

Which is interesting when you read the full story behind that because not to

make excuses for the, kind of appalling way that the sun presented that, and

that was very specifically Kel McKenzie's decision was presented as the truth

when it was anything but on the front.

But it's also, when you had background on it, the sources on that were

the head of the police, who it's turned out at the inquiry since, was

telling absolute lies all the way and attempting to cover his, own back.

and his officer's own backs were the appalling mistakes they've

made, which led to, led to all those deaths, but also the local mp.

it was, a lot of people were misled along the way and telling lies along the way

before it arrived in the way it did on the, front of the, of the sun in that way.

So it's, really interesting on that kinda like backroom stuff and, how stories

came to occur in the way that they did.

But also, again, like, my first choice, a bit of a historical piece

now, because this is not the Yeah.

The, denuded post.

Levison post, lots and lots of money, Sun of today.

Ian: the sun when I was first at the eye was just a fantastic target.

I remember during Falkland's war, we ran a, a Sun front page, which, had on

the side kill an Archie and win a Metro.

Yeah.

which was a fake competition, but it wasn't far off.

Yeah.

Adam: What they genuinely, one of the stories in here is that there were

soldiers who saw a copy of that out in, out in, in Argentina, out in the

Falklands and thought it was genuine.

really genuinely did not realise it was a spoof because it was so of, a kind with

the, the coverage they ran at that time.

Gotcha.

Famously was the headline when the, the ano went down, which was literally

just something that Wendy Henry, who was an executive on the sun, shouted

out when, when this boat had been hit by, British forces and was sinking,

but then of course turned out lots and lots of people had died on it.

And, and they had to, slightly amend that for the, the, the second

edition, which then got elided in the, in, in the subsequent

histories when they I wanted it.

Yeah.

Was

Ian: very, I was very proud of putting Gotcha on the front page when, Murdoch

went down and the news of the world sank with the loss of all hags.

Yeah.

oh, that was a glorious press there, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Andy: Yeah.

No, it is amazing.

just even just flicking through it now, you just get the sense of,

'cause this is one of the other ones you recommended when I started out.

Just the, the power and aggression of the sun and how fun they made it.

But also, here we are, we've got the, I was gonna

Helen: say you got to John

Andy: campaign against Elton John,

Helen: they said he'd had the voice boxes removed from his guard

Adam: dogs.

They, it was extraordinary.

It started off, off, started off with supposedly the confessions of a rent boy

who Elton had hired, who turned out to be a complete fantasist and nothing sold.

But then they, when when Elton sued, the son went in all guns blazing against him.

'cause that was absolutely their attitude to things.

And yes, finally the story that did it was one that he'd

had guard dogs at his mansion.

He'd had their voice boxes removed 'cause their barking disturbed him.

And they literally, the story is in there.

They sent a journalist round to try and get photos of these dogs

and, maybe interview the dogs.

I, they're gonna talk, could they?

and he said,

Ian: stop the,

Adam: he literally phoned in, I think it's in the early days of

mobile phones, phoned in the office and said, I can hear them barking.

Listen, they went, ah, screw it.

Publish it anyway.

And that was at that point, the biggest ever libel payout.

They paid 1 million pounds to Elton and had to do a front page apology,

which is even more of a rarity.

'cause usually these things tucked away.

And so just said, sorry, Elton, across the front page.

Ian: And that's when he came up with that quote, which I remember thinking

this is a bit of a turning point.

He said, you can call me a silly al p if you like, say what you

like, but you are not going to tell lies about me, about my dogs.

And then Britain suddenly thought he likes dogs.

It's fine.

The sun's awful.

And it's

Helen: interesting that everything, like you say, everything old is new again.

Draw a direct line from that kind of treatment to Elton John joining Prince

Harry's court case that you have reported on, like when you know that

background to the way that he was treated.

Adam: Yeah.

Helen: As a very rare out gay pop star, then you understand suddenly why

he might have had a bit of a grudge.

Adam: Yes.

yeah.

You can.

what we said about that in, in the last podcast, wasn't it, was essentially

this was people prosecuting the past behaviour of the tabloids in it's a

world that doesn't really exist anymore.

Whatever else you might think about them.

it's, it was, a long time coming for a lot of these people and they have

got very kind of deep set reasons for

Helen: you would Yeah.

The poor dogs.

How are the up and the dogs are dead now, aren't they?

Obviously.

I

Adam: would imagine The dogs are still with us from 1987.

Yeah.

Andy: Helen, what's your second one?

Helen: My second one I'm down there is Oh yeah.

Mother Tongue.

Oh yeah.

Which is by Bill Bryson.

So you'll probably know Bill Bryson is an incredible travel writer.

I think he's one of the funniest, travel writers there is.

And I particularly appreciate him as a Brit who spends a lot of time in America.

He was obviously an American from Iowa who spent a lot of

time in Settle in Yorkshire.

So he's got two books on language.

This is one of them.

The other one's called Troublesome Words.

And if you want, if you love journalism and you have to love the

English language and it's incredible, infinite, capricious variety.

He's got, there's a history here of, of the English language,

which is just really good.

Really good introductory history and the kind of innate multiculturalism

of English, the fact it's just borrowed, it's succeeded by just unlike

French, and having the Academy France saying you can't say the weekend.

English has just, it's just taken everything from everywhere.

I found out some really great words that I'd never heard before.

Have you ever heard the word ome before?

Andy: No.

Helen: It means horrid, like ugly, ome.

Adam: they name the boots after it because they're so ugly.

Helen: Maybe that is, I just challenge you to use that in a

sentence in the, in the next week.

But, the other thing I didn't know about this is that, US UK English have

got closer together because ofer the dominance of American films than they

were at the start of the 20th century.

So until we had American movies, it wasn't standard UK English

to use any of these words.

Grapevine.

A fan in the sense of I'm a fan of whatever gimmick and phoney Anyway, I

really appreciate this 'cause his just attention to the craft of language

is really lovely and delightful

Adam: and it's a subeditors choice, which I love as well.

We talked about reporters going out in the field, but also the great

unsung heroes are the subs who actually chop the stuff into usable

copy at the end of it, don't they?

Helen: And,

he was a sub editor at the Times, actually, I think just before the

whopping dispute, because there's a great description of the old, do you remember

the Old Times Office down at whopping?

So it just turned to all our yesterday.

Do you remember the Old Times office, which he described.

And I remember I went there for work experience in about 2002 and thinking

this was the perfect description.

He described it as looking like the air conditioning unit for the planet.

And it did, it was one of the ugliest buildings you've ever seen.

yeah.

Great.

Looks you

Ian: optimist.

Helen: It was theist.

Adam: Yeah.

Andy: his description is in, the first book notes from a small

island, I think of his early career working as a sub at the Times.

And it just sounds like hell, because he's working with this

Helen: mad people, mad,

Andy: mad, weird rat, like little colleagues who he can't understand.

It doesn't really, it doesn't gel with at all.

Adam: And it's unionised, pre whopping isn't it?

To the point where he's not allowed to touch certain things so he can, he

can, go to collect a piece of paper from one department that he's gotta

take somewhere else very urgently.

Yeah.

But the man's on his break and he's not allowed to pick it up off the table.

The man has to hand it to him.

It's just to be insanity of those.

Yeah.

It's fantastic.

Those kind of days.

Ian: And the hierarchies of, the journalists aren't really allowed to,

mix or question the subs and the subs aren't allowed in the print room.

The a it's, it was amazingly split in those days.

Yeah.

Andy: all right, let's have one last one.

I've picked another novel as my second one, and this one is New Grub Street.

Ah,

Ian: hey.

Andy: So this is another terrific one.

the end of the 19th century, and it's about two characters.

One is they're both poor to start off.

One is ambitious and willing to compromise on quality.

And the other is, dedicated to literature and the flame of

knowledge and, good quality writing.

There is no doubt at all which one of them is gonna win the race

of his career and its marriage.

And, the, the whole thing is about money and about the kind of hack

trade new Grub Street is the, phrase for, the kind of space where these

writers are all applying their trade.

you've got Edwin Reardon, who is poor, but honest and doing his best with

one really good novel every couple of years, which may or may not sell

and might earn a hundred pounds, 150.

And then you've got Jasper Mill vain, who is ambitious, determined to get to

the top, determined to grow over his own family, to, he's taking money from his

mother and his sisters to fund his career and is just determined to get there.

And so it, reads like a tragedy.

And I think the author George Kissing's life was a bit of a tragedy.

He was an intensely pessimistic person, and, I think he died pretty young

after writing a lot of high quality novels that did not sell terribly well.

Helen: I was gonna say, I think it's due to the obscure

levels of miserable, that book.

I love it.

Oh

Andy: yeah.

it's, it is a tough read in parts, but it's terrific.

it's so good, and you can't help, a part of me can't help really

liking Jasper Mulva in his, he's a kind of proto tabloid hack.

Yeah.

he is shameless, it's the first scene as him sitting to, to breakfast

with his two sisters and his mother.

And as he hears the clock strike eight, he says, there's someone

being hanged in London right now.

And his sisters go, oh, that's, how could you mention that at the breakfast table?

That's disgusting.

And he's, I read it in the paper last night, eight

o'clock's, the time they do it.

So it's happening right now.

Imagine that.

And that's, it sums up his character very well.

Helen: I was gonna ask you a very unfair question, which is, who do

you think are the Jasper Melva in the Edmond ridden of today in journalism?

No, for people who haven't read it, how does that translate?

Who's a kind of,

Ian: oh my gosh.

Helen: Who's a kind of joyful but hacky hack?

Andy: Ooh, come on.

Ian: It's peers, isn't it?

Is peers.

It's exactly what I was gonna say.

Yeah,

Andy: yeah.

Jasper Melvin would be setting up his own new YouTube outfit right now.

Helen: Yes, that's true.

Yes.

He'd do filming a lot of vertical

Ian: content.

And arid would have, a very earnest collection of pieces on Substack Yes.

In the hope that someone had read them.

Helen: Yes.

So literally sub perhaps occasionally writing shorts for the LRB.

Andy: Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I don't wanna, I don't wanna pin anyone as being an urban ridden

'cause it's, it consigns them to c career and then actual death.

Yes.

Ian: it's a very black joke that Ed ridden.

the hero of the Radio four series, who is, a pretty funny hack who

ends up writing all sorts of things.

brilliant series written by

Christopher Douglas,

and Andrew Nichols.

It's incredibly funny about who will write what for what money,

but he calls him Ed ridden.

he calls him the other one.

Yeah, I think is a very good joke.

Adam: And Jasper Mill Vains, of course, is his great enemy, isn't he?

Who's, gone to Hollywood and made really, appalling films.

Mostly his star, animatronic dolphins.

Oh, that's great.

But it's hugely successful.

Yeah.

But so it's a kind of comic retelling, if you like, of

this, this rather tragic book.

Helen: But that kind of comes back to Scoop again, right?

The sense if you work in journalism, there's already somebody doing better

than you, making more money than you by being less principled than you.

And you have to sit there going, maybe if I, maybe I'm not successful

because I'm just too honest.

That's what it is

Ian: and I'm too good.

Andy: Yeah.

Yeah.

It really sums up that

Helen: mentality.

Andy: Constant, the constant

Helen: journalist mentality

Andy: debate of where the career is going.

Should you be doing it?

Shouldn't you be doing this other thing?

Because the decision tree is so broad as a journalist, you can end up

doing almost anything in this field,

Ian: So that's why the end of Scoop is so pleasing.

'cause William Booth really only wants to write nature notes.

Yeah.

He, and the last piece he writes is really good, beautiful prose.

Yeah.

no one's gonna read it.

they're gonna turn it over, but he's happy.

Yeah.

And, the rest of them less

Andy: George Kissing was sent to prison at the age of, I think 18 for stealing

five shillings and two pins at his college from another student's clothes

he was a brilliant scholar, but it just completely derailed his career.

So he's, it is a very pessimistic, but it is brilliant.

it's so worth reading.

It flies by in a depressing way.

Helen: Yeah.

The other thing is also the sense in lots of these books that you can this is a very

grand romantic 18th century way of saying it, make a living through the pen, right?

Like that.

Inevitably you just have things to sell and they're your thoughts and opinions and

sketches, and it's a kind of sketchy life.

Yeah.

But it's exciting.

Andy: Yeah.

Helen: Is that true anymore in journalism?

Can you just sell a piece

Adam: and live on it?

You can do it as a YouTuber, can't you?

effectively that's what people are doing of just like making opinion videos

and making money off the advertising.

So I suppose it has translated in that way and you're selling their

own personalities and opinions.

Helen: Yeah.

Andy: It's, but it's not all common.

I think you do get people who are making it in journalism.

look at people like, London Centric or the Londonist two brilliant outlets.

Yeah.

Just in this city alone, which are, doing it, which are refreshing local journalism.

Ian: great thing about the Ging book, which again is it pervades, journalism and

I, again, when I first joined the eye, I said, what, why is everyone called hacks?

Why does it insist on this slightly derogatory term for everyone here?

And we still have the hacks meeting on Tuesday, and that all comes

from this period of not taking the craft too seriously, yourself

believing in it, but thinking

there are, limitations and there are things that are funny about

Adam: it.

Yeah.

Who was the very famous actor who objected to the, the use of the

word lovey in, in, in, Private Eye?

Ian: I think it was it not Trevor Nunn?

Adam: It might well have been.

Yes.

Yes.

A director rather than

Ian: actor.

And he was absolutely Furious.

And then he found out that the, the word was coined by the late

Great John Sessions, a great actor.

And he and Kenneth b Braner used to call each other IES when they were at

Radda as a form of self-deprecating.

humour about being too serious about being an actor.

And John was both a brilliant actor and a very funny man.

Adam: But I think Reverend was, we like calling him Journalist Hack.

Ian: Yes.

Adam: I was like, yeah, we do that.

That's fine.

That's fine.

Quite proud of it.

Thank you.

Andy: Ah, So you now have eight terrific books about journalism,

reporting the English language to read.

Enjoy your holidays.

Please send us your report to the usual Eye email address.

We look forward to hearing what you made of all of them.

that's it for this episode of page 94.

If you would like more reading matter for the beach, you can get a copy of

Private Eye available at your local news stand, and that's you way on holiday.

In which case, go to the website private for night.co uk and subscribe now.

So your first copy will be waiting for you when you get home.

Thank you very much to all of you for listening to Ian, Helen, and

Adam for playing and to Matt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing.

Bye for now.