Why we need Private Eye and its satire more than ever The magazine has been going for 58 years now and the demand for it is not letting up

Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, is doing a live tour of the British Museum exhibition, ‘A Golden Age of Satire’, in which he discusses the legacy of James Gillray and George Cruikshank, who scalded the Georgian establishment with caricatures that spat contempt.

Contemporary leaders, from Boris Johnson and Donald Trump to Brazilian hard man President Jair Bolsonaro and ex-comedian Volodymr Zelensky (now President of Ukraine), deflect such attacks by adopting cartoonish personas of their own.

On receiving an award this year for “Outstanding Contribution to British Media”, Hislop said satire was not easy “when the real world is trying so hard to compete”.

i's opinion newsletter: talking points from today Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

Yet Private Eye has been going for 58 years now and the demand for it is not letting up.

A simple business model

Its latest circulation figures reveal a rock solid sale of 233,565. The number bought at the newsstand each fortnight hovers around 80,000 and depends on how funny the cover is.

A further 150,000 go to subscribers (despite the magazine’s habit of publishing letters from supposedly disgusted readers claiming to have “cancelled my subscription”.)

It’s a simple business model and one on which most of the beleaguered magazine publishing industry (as it stumbles blindly to “transition to digital”) must look with envy and dismay.

I chatted with Hislop (editor since 1986) and his predecessor Richard Ingrams (who edited for 23 years before that) earlier this month at the launch of ‘A Whole Scene Going On’, a new memoir by Private Eye stalwart Barry Fantoni.

Hislop sees no reason to engage with social media. Nor is there a need to chase after advertisers. While other publications fret over their ageing readerships, the Eye seems to inherit each generation of students by rite of passage. Older readers drift away to pursue more personal interests, he notes without concern.

Another golden era for satire

Private Eye’s continued relevance is a sign of our need for humour in fraught political times. It’s also an indication of the public’s cynical view of the news machine operated by mass media. This can be another golden era for satire.

Fantoni’s book, subtitled ‘My Inside Story of Private Eye, the Pop Revolution and Swinging Sixties London’, reveals the magazine’s peculiar chemistry and why it was founded in 1961 by Ingrams and his former school friends Willie Rushton and Christopher Booker (who was founding editor and died earlier this year). Fantoni, a pop artist who depicted the Duke of Edinburgh in vest and underpants, joined in 1963 and drew over 40 early covers.

The first edition of the Eye was compiled “on the floor of Willie Rushton’s granny’s kitchen”. During the Sixties it was made by a Neasden printer, Leo Thorpe, from eight “scruffy” pages “stuck together with cow gum and Sellotape”.

This “school mag”, writes Fantoni, was “perfect for the purpose it was intended – to poke the Establishment in the eye with the sharpest stick to hand.” In a time-honoured ritual, the Eye’s jokes are verbally tested in the office, then written down by the editor “with a biro on pink bank paper”.

Fantoni, who invented several classic Eye fixtures, such as the sports commentary gaffes column ‘Colemanballs’, was presenter of the Sixties television series ‘A Whole Scene Going’, one of the BBC’s first attempts to reach a youth audience. He is a jazz player, a songwriter, a comedian, a writer of gumshoe detective novels and a star of the early McVitie’s Jaffa Cake ads.

Worth the effort

During the Sixties, his art studio at “60 South Side” in Clapham became a place to hang out. He describes friendships with Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, Marianne Faithfull, Peter Osgood and others who helped to define Swinging Sixties London.

Along with Peter Cook, who he reveres as a “genius”, the working-class art college graduate connected a magazine founded by a group of public school boys to the dynamic popular culture going on around it.

The Eye’s popularity, he points out, has not always been guaranteed. At one point circulation tumbled from an early 90,000 to a pitiful 15,000 “as a result of satire hitting a dip”.

Cook’s TV appearances helped its revival and Fantoni argues that Hislop’s presence on the BBC’s ‘Have I Got News for You’ has had “much the same effect on the Eye’s readership figures today”.



Read More When I advised David Cameron I had high hopes, but he will be forever tainted by the horror story of Brexit

Before the ‘Jezza and Boris show’, Britain’s modern political leaders looked like a production line; a problem for satirists.

“You can only be funny if the people you attack are worth the effort,” Fantoni writes. “Until very recently the Establishment has appeared dull and faceless and one might say some of the jokes with it.”

But he credits Hislop’s magazine with adapting to cover wider issues. “The political and social climate has changed and the Eye has responded. The circulation has never been higher.”

Today’s politicians are certainly “worth the effort”. We need Private Eye and its sharp stick more than ever.