From farts to farts in three generations
Via Jamie, the general subject of giving up on Private Eye. I also have more or less given up, basically for the reason that the darn thing isn't funny any more. Hasn't been for some time. Hislop's glory years were the 80s and early 90s, when "Have I Got News For You" was in its early days and when he finally drove Punch into the ground and gained the monopoly on British satirical news. Now ... well, now he is Punch, isn't he? Lots of tired in-jokes, the same bunch of cronies editing the thing, imperceptibly shifting into a bunch of old blokes harrumphing at each other in a saloon bar. Basically, Top Gear for people who can't drive.
There's a story arc here and it's not necessarily one that Hislop might like. Once upon a time, a bunch of sharp young men launched a magazine. Then they gradually turned into old farts, but in the meantime, they had attracted a surrounding gang of sharp young sycophants. But time moves on, and the second generation are well into farthood, and the diminishing number of young bloods aren't attracted to the tradition of Peter Cook and Paul Foot - they're HIGNFY fans, sycophants of the second degree.
Part of turning into an old fart surrounded by yes-men is that you become arrogant. That's why Tim Ireland isn't getting his apology. Ian Hislop has finally achieved his ambition of turning into Richard Ingrams; now that's what I call irony.
I was really dismayed when they decided to replace St Albion's (which was apt in itself and could accommodate a fairly wide range of material) with a 'Stalinist' theme for Brown: it struck me as lazy and wilfully ignorant, the kind of thing only someone who actually hated Labour would come up with. It'll be fairly interesting to see what they do with the new regime, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
ReplyDeleteIt's not very funny anymore, but I suppose that was meant to be only a small part of its appeal. I think the other side, the investigations and gossip and so on is partly filled by the internet nowadays. Not very well, but enough to stop buying it regularly.
ReplyDeleteI can go weeks without buying it, but when I do remember it exists (which is a sign in itself) it's quite a treat. One of the best things to read whilst your eating or on a train as it's quite small.
Hislop's painful to watch on HIGNFY. He made Bruce Forsyth look witty and on the ball this week. It's really just the Paul Merton show now.
ReplyDeleteI still buy Private Eye sometimes but there are no jokes and there's usually less in it than in the Evening Standard.
I stopped even buying it occasionally after Paul Foot died. I never found it terribly funny even back in the 80s, but it was good at uncovering stories that were ignored elsewhere. But these days you can't trust them to get the facts, or even the basic story arc, right. And that's assuming that the story isn't simply a contributor settling a score.
ReplyDeleteWithout Paul Merton, would HIGNFY be funny? Its certainly never had much satirical bite compared to the two Johns, or even the News Quiz.
I don't really find Paul Merton that funny either: his HIGNFY shtick is extremely predictable these days; merely stopping himself from being bored. (Better solution: quit the programme and do something else that isn't lame rubbish.)
ReplyDeleteI have a bunch of very ancient PEs of my dad's, when he was a daring young man in the early 60s: you really do get a sense of how very far beyond comfy they were going in very far-off those days; how little they felt they belonged or chose to belong. It never remotely felt like that under Hislop, whatever "good work" he was doing. The cultural coverage was always been middlebrow garbage.
We've done this a few times on AW - personally I don't think the Eye is much better or worse than it ever was (at least in my experience of it, which does not include the Sixties). It's always had a lot of crap in it, a tendency to uninteresting feuds and a bias towards inaccuracy. And of course a lot of stuff that the mainstream ought to do but nearly always doesn't.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would agree that Hislop has spread himself far too thinly, which Ingrams in fact never did - he buggered off to Wallingford to keep out of the media world and was much the better for it. If you do as many things as Hislop does then there's at very least a danger that you lose your focus, go onto auto-pilot etc and there's a reasonably argument that that's been happening.
On the other hand, though, the Eye has always been reckoned to be better under a Tory government, and now there is one again. (In some ways, it occurs to me, it's always been largely conservatives writing about conservatives, hasn't it?)
Nick Davies wasn't vey happy with them the other day, was he? And rightly so.
Nick Davies wasn't vey happy with them the other day, was he?
ReplyDeletesounds interesting, what's this?
It's always had a lot of crap in it, a tendency to uninteresting feuds and a bias towards inaccuracy.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere between London N19, Paris, and Yorkshire, either my father or I have a copy of the book of the Eye in the 60s, and this is right. Even in the form of a selection of the best moments from its best years, there's still a hell of a lot of crap, public-school wank, tiresome feuds with boring people, and "scoops" that actually turned out to be nonsense.
It was in #1261: Davies wrote them an angry letter saying they'd made up a story about him (in which he was supposed to have done a deal involving going easy on Max Clifford in return for an interview with one of his clients) A note accepted there was no truth in the story and apologised.
ReplyDeleteNick Davies is, of course, the sort of person they ought to have writing for them, rather than pissing him off in order to pursue a feud.
ahh right.
ReplyDeletein which he was supposed to have done a deal involving going easy on Max Clifford in return for an interview with one of his clients
I suspect that this was an amazingly BACAI description of this piece. Which kind of sums up what's wrong with the whole magazine.
It's always had a lot of crap in it, a tendency to uninteresting feuds and a bias towards inaccuracy.
ReplyDeleteAnd the point at which it becomes problematic is when you have knowledge of the stuff they're being inaccurate about.
"And the point at which it becomes problematic is when you have knowledge of the stuff they're being inaccurate about."
ReplyDeleteWell, no, for you will correct for that. It's when you don't know it's wrong that you get the problems....
What Nick said, though the In The City section is written by someone who knows their chops (not so much the rest of the Back Section though.)
ReplyDeleteThat said, it's revealing that Rupe finds Private Eye an amusing, but ultimately harmless, part of the British Establishment. (Michael Wolff's recent book on him comes highly recommended - not so much for the prose, but the footnotes.)
Of course Rupe finds it harmless. The rest of the media establishment (apart from HIGNFY, and that's a comedy show) maintains the determined illusion that Private Eye does not exist. No matter what shenanigans it uncovers.
ReplyDelete