129: Private Eye - The Year In Review 2024

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of page 94.

My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, but I am not hosting this week's episode.

I am merely introducing a very special Christmassy bonus episode of page 94.

This is our annual Private Eye live from London's glittering West End spectacular show.

This is a night that was recorded a few days ago at the Shaftesbury Theatre and it features all the very best gags from this year's Private Eye annual, which, by the way, still in shops if you can get your hands on one.

They're very close to selling out, but it is a terrific annual.

This is a night where all the very best gags are brought to life by a crack team of brilliant voices.

So you're going to be hearing Harry Enfield, Lewis McLeod, Jan Ravens, and the whole thing, of course, is helmed by Ian Heslop.

So over to Ian right now, without any further ado, enjoy this little extra Christmas treat.

Okay.

We start with our notes and queries service, in which we try and answer readers' questions on very important subjects.

So, notes and queries.

Six-year-old Kevin from Newport Pagnell asks.

At this time of year, I, like a lot of children, wonder how it is possible for one man with his gifts to fly around the world, being everywhere at once, bringing joy and harmony.

Could you explain?

Well, Kevin, this is one of the miracles of Christmas, and it's one that I hope you still believe in, despite what cynical adults might say.

And actually, we've got the man himself here to answer your question.

Hi, Kevin.

It's Keir Starmer here.

And I have a magic ability to fly everywhere, from Rio to Washington to Paris and London, in a very short space of time.

This is because, as star Macairmas,

I

have a special prime ministerial sleigh made by my father, who

who you may remember was an elvish tool maker.

This allows me to fly greenly with no carbon emissions to bring happiness to every boy and girl around the globe, despite the last 14 years of Tory misrule.

No further questions.

Thank you, Father Christmas.

2024 was very much the year of the post office scandal for us at Private Eye.

And I thought we would pay our early tribute to the great figure at the centre of it all, someone who is in many ways a saint.

And lo, in those days there was a great preacher and holy woman.

And her name was St.

Paula.

That is called Venels.

And she did travel the land persecuting innocent men and women

who believed in the office that is called post.

And this continued for many years as she zealously sought out the blameless and the vulnerable and did vent her wrath against them, even unto sending them to prison.

And she looked upon her works and proclaimed them to be good.

I have achieved miracles.

I am the chosen one to lead the post office into the promised land of abundance, and my reward will be on earth, where bonuses shall fall from heaven like manna.

And she was hailed to be a great champion of the law and the prophets.

But then it came to pass that St.

Paula was travelling on the road to Aldwych, where there was to be a public inquiry into these matters.

And verily on the horizon,

St.

Paula did see a blindingly obvious light.

And it spake to her, saying, Paula, Paula, why do you persecute these innocent people?

And St.

Paula did fall to her knees, saying,

I don't recall.

I don't know, I wasn't there for that meeting.

And the blindingly obvious light replied, This isn't very convincing, is it?

But still St.

Paula wept and gnashed her teeth, saying unto the heavenly presence, I blame everyone else.

I was just too trusting.

And the men and women from the office that is called post waxed exceeding wroth, though being nice people, they did just mutter one to another, tutting and laughing in disbelief, rather than shouting, Lock her up and throweth away the key,

as would have been entirely understandable.

And St.

Paula was led away, still blinded to her own manifold wickednesses.

And so she was converted from St.

Paula to plain the appalling venals.

And people did marvel at this change, saying, In centuries to come, people will remember this transfiguration, although she probably won't, and will claim she can't recall the detail.

And hats off to the postmasters and mistresses.

I was hoping now to read out a Christmas blessing from Paula's great friend, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But sadly, it seems to be lost in the post.

So now it's time for something cheerier.

It's time for Dumb Britain.

We start its questions from the tipping point, mastermind, the weakest link, the wheel.

And so, for convenience, our presenter this evening is Bradley Walsh.

What famous waterfall

located in Africa was named in honor of a 19th-century British queen, Niagara?

Which Commonwealth country has had two prime ministers named Malcolm?

Spain.

Who was the Russian leader during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962?

Rasputin.

What was the Christian name of the suffragette whose surname was Fawcett?

Farah.

Which controversial British music ampresario was the manager of of the sex pistols?

Robert Maxwell.

The kingdom of Lazoto is entirely surrounded by what other country?

Wales.

Featured on a Bank of England banknote, which economist wrote the wealth of nations?

Milton Keynes.

Who succeeded François Hollande as President of France?

Vladimir Putin.

Which Labour Party leader was a mine worker at the age of 10?

David Cameron.

What duke was played by Christopher Plummer in the film Waterloo?

Duke Ellington.

If it's your birthday today, 8th of March, your star sign is a fish.

Name that star sign.

Tuna.

Which British naval commander lost his right arm in battle in 1797?

Captain Hook.

Which biblical character danced the dance of the seven Vales?

Jesus.

And And that's enough, dumb Britain.

Thank you very much to Marcus and the compilers.

If you are looking for a book to buy a loved one this Christmas, there is an obvious choice and it will be on sale later in the foyer.

But you might prefer a book by Liz Truss.

which came out this year and Private Eye was delighted to run a mini serialization of Liz Truss's autobiography, 10 Years to Save the West.

In my totes and maze balls work, 10 Minutes to Write This Book,

I detail who is to blame for the total collapse of the British economy after my mini budget, which led to the premature end of my premiership.

And I can exclusively reveal that it was all the fault of the following.

The Blob, Tony Blair, Virtue Signalling EcoZealots, the Anti-Growth Coalition, the Anti-Freeze Coalition,

the Tony Blob, the Deep State, the Deep Fat Friar, the Bank of England, the Bank of Mum and Dad, lefty lawyers, righty lawyers, in-betweeny lawyers, the Wokerati, snowflakes, cornflakes, Cadbury's flakes,

Flake News, the OBR, the OBM, the OBE, the OB-1 Kenobi, the IMF,

the IDF, IDS, the IRA, VAR, MFI, MI5, the Jackson 5, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, the BBC, Joe Biden, Joe Pasquale, Joe 90, Jeremy Hunt, the Queen, John Lewis, Occado, Lettis,

everyone I ever worked with, everyone I haven't ever worked with, everyone but me, I know.

If you want to buy a present that's a bit more mellow and a bit more thoughtful, I wanted to recommend the new book by a top cookery writer.

Not a topless cookery writer, because that would be Greg Wallace.

No,

this is the far classier Nigel Slater.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Autumn trages towards winter.

Mud boots, mud warm on boots already laden with the deep brown, busky warmth of manure.

It is a time of year when I am happy to spend a little while longer in the kitchen.

My favourite jumper, do we not all have one?

acts as a cookery diary, blossoming with the smudges of a rich assortment of dishes, charting each day, month, and year.

When it was first presented to me by a very dear friend, it was a smoky kind of beige.

But after decades of curries, stews, and sizzling stir-fries, it has turned charcoal and crimson, followed by lilac and saffron, lavender, grey, azure, and cobalt, cerulean, woe, and indigo, azure and translucent cornflower.

Few kitchen moments are as peaceful as those spent stirring a puree.

Damson, blackcurrant, plum, goldfish, mango

into softly whipped cream.

Personally, I always remove clothes to perform this sublime act

and prefer to conduct the ceremony hanging upside down from the flecks of my favourite kitchen light.

This lends my wrist the necessary gravity to whip the cream with due pressure whilst affording me a wonderfully topsy-turvy upside-down view of familiar surroundings.

There's a portly bumblebee caught in my kitchen skylight.

After a struggle, I rescue him with a long-handled feather duster from Fukova

and gently pace him in my skillet.

After two or three minutes, I ladle a light batter over him, drowning him on both sides.

Served with a tart gooseberry puree and Segovian parsley, Bumblebee fritter makes a refreshing mid-morning snack.

If, after a couple of swallows, you feel a sharp pain towards the back of your throat, followed by golf ball-sized swelling leading to breathlessness, this may indicate that you got bored before reaching the end of this paragraph and neglected to remove the sting before serving.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr.

Slater.

Talking of upmarket features, Tribod Eye has its own resident poet, E.J.

Thribb, who writes obituaries, eulogies, threnides, in fact.

And we'll be having a selection tonight, remembering some of the great figures of the age who left us in 2024.

I would like to start with one of my own favourites.

This is In Memoriam Tito Jackson,

elder brother of Michael Jackson.

So, farewell then, Tito Jackson.

Not many pop stars are named after the former president of Yugoslavia.

But you will be mostly remembered for the Jackson 5,

or as it is now, the Jackson 3.

Your cause of death was initially thought to be a heart condition, but the coroner has now officially blamed it on the booty.

I do apologise for that.

It's not just old formats like poetry that Private Eye does.

We're very modern.

And we also run the thoughts of top technological titans like Elon Musk.

These were his thoughts given to Private Eye before the big, important election of this year.

This is the most important election in human history.

The Democrats want to take away your freedom of speech and mine.

They want to take away our freedom to tell the truth.

Fact, if there is a Democratic Party victory, their stated aim is to force us to speak Mexican and wear sombreros in our homes and workplaces.

Have you seen how big sombreros are?

This disastrous policy would mean widening our doorways at the cost of billions so that we could go in and out of our houses in this cumbersome headgear.

Fact.

Widening our nation's doorways will lead to the sudden collapse of up to 50% of our homes.

Vote for Trump or die.

Fact.

For the past 48 years, Elvis Presley has been held against his will in room 247 of the Democratic Party HQ,

430 South Capitol Street, Southeast Washington.

I am offering $1 million to the first person to set him free.

Vote Trump.

Trump must win, win, win.

His administration has drawn up emergency plans to save the world.

Fact: on day one, the White House plus Rose Garden will relocate to a prime location on the moon.

On day two, the U.S.

Capitol building will move to Mars.

On day three, Donald's beautiful Mar-a-Lago complex will relocate to Jupiter, all courtesy of SpaceX.

Vote Trump,

Elon Musk.

We did have an election here in the UK too.

We had a very important election and we changed Prime Minister.

Instead of a dull technocrat who doesn't like politics and kept denouncing pledges and targets and getting tetchy about criticism,

well, we got a big change.

And it wasn't long before new Prime Minister Starmer ran into trouble.

over political donations.

Fortunately, Private Eye was leaked to the entire WhatsApp group of the new government.

Sakir Starmer.

I want us to concentrate on the important issues rather than gossip and tittle-tattle on about what I'm wearing and who paid for it.

Angela Raynor.

Yeah, everyone should just put a sock in it.

Lord Wahid Ali.

Socks?

Who wants socks?

Egyptian cotton, designer footwear.

Morgan McSweeney.

The boss is right.

No more talk about freebies.

The optics are terrible.

Lord Ali.

Optics.

Anyone need glasses?

Rachel Reeves.

Let's be honest, Pierre.

It is a bit of a problem.

I can't see it.

What do you need?

Verifocal?

Bifocal?

It's a media storm.

Someone leaked this.

I've been stitched up.

Garment alteration, invisible mending, I could sort it.

There's nothing wrong with with me taking tickets to the Taylor Swift concert.

It was a sell-out.

Don't be so hard on yourself.

Any suggestion of impropriety is nonsense.

I don't buy it.

Of course not, Kier.

You must not buy anything.

Morgan McSweeney.

It's not a good look, Prime Minister.

What?

You don't like the smart casual?

How about the suits?

They're all a bit grey.

Don't mention Sue Gray.

She's fired.

And what about you, Angelo?

You took a freebie to a disco in Ibiza.

That is unfair and inaccurate.

It was not a disco, it was a rave.

And anyway, I paid for it next morning with a banging headache.

Venom cocktail, one bottle of vodka, one bottle of Stilgon Comfort, ten bottles of blue, and a litre of orange juice.

As a lawyer, one could argue that Angela's trip was party business.

Sure was.

Party!

And I haven't slept since Friday.

Whoop, whoop, whoop.

Rachel Reeves.

Or perhaps it was a work event, like Keir going to the football.

Work events?

I hope no one is comparing me to former freebie-taking, sleazy prime ministers who had no moral compass.

You need a compass, gold, silver, brass, magnetic, digital.

The WhatsApp group.

In 2024, another former Prime Minister wouldn't leave the stage and decided it would be a a good idea to use his column in the Daily Mail to attack the new government in Britain.

In Private Eyes Office, we have an ironyometer,

which I'm afraid broke

on that day.

This was Boris Johnson on standards in public life.

I say, talk about summertime and the living living is sneezy.

Or should I say starma time and the cost of living is squeezy.

Never in the history of British politics has any Prime Minister,

make that Prime Minister shown himself to be more corrupt, venal, and in the pay of rich donors than Sir Clear Stinker.

Can anyone remember a prime minister, or should I say prime sinister,

who is more obviously on the make, amoral, and utterly bent than the man wearing free glasses and a shiny suit in the Rose Garden, voila.

Or should I say Poe's garden?

Yes, friends, we all know that Sir Shearer Smarma has shown himself unfit to occupy number 10 Downing Street, where he gowns beers and curries before putting on his expensive glasses, which he clearly needs because he can't see what a staggeringly hypocritical humbug he is.

Whatever next?

Will we see Sir Barmi Stami arranging £800,000 loans from distant relatives and taking freebie holidays while spaffing millionaire's moolah on soft furnishings and gold wallpaper?

How long before Sir Complete Bummer

starts holding drunken parties, breaking all the rules,

not to mention the kiddie's swing in the garden?

What a two-faced, lying, fraudulent scumbag I am.

Boris Johnson.

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One of the major cultural debates at the moment is whether one should change the literature of the past to make it reflect current circumstances.

And Private Eye says yes, you have to modernise some old works, and in particular, the work of the Lakeland poets, whose moving descriptions of nature have had to be updated.

Daffodils by William Turdsworth.

I wandered, lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er Windermere, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of turds and diarrhoea.

Inside the lake, beneath the trees, festering and stinking in the breeze, continuous in a stream of slime and tinkle in a a murky way.

They stretched in never-ending line like a giant litter tray.

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, bobbing their heads in shitely dance.

That's quite enough, verses.

Thank you, and if any of you have got a large water bill that you can't pay from, say, Thames Water, they've passed on a tip, which is to say you have huge debts, you borrowed a lot of money from the bank and spent it all on yourself and you're expecting the government to cover your costs.

My favourite cover of the year was when one of the water companies poisoned the water supply.

We had two men in hard hats, one of them saying what about the parasites and the other one saying we pay them huge dividends.

Anyway back to sport.

This is the other of Private Eyes' most popular columns.

It's like Dumb Britain, except these are real quotes from real sports commentators.

They're sent in by readers and collated by Simon Edmonds.

So thanks to him.

We start with Alan Shearer on BBC One.

This is what drives footballers mad.

It's the lack of inconsistency.

Rio Ferdinand on TNT Sports.

Old habits die young.

A commentator on Radio 5 Live.

Literally with the last kick of the game, Declan Rice heads one in.

Steve Thompson on Tangerine TV.

He's gestating at the linesman.

Commentator on BBC Radio Scotland.

One of the Motherwell players looks like he's taking an elbow up the far end.

Rio Ferdinand again on TNT Sports.

I thought he'd miss.

Not trying to say I'm like Houdini or anything like that, but I did call it.

Alan Shearer on the Rest is Football podcast.

We can't speculate as to why or how or what or all of those things.

We just have to guess, don't we?

Jill Scott on Channel 4.

What I love about Esri Comsra are his long balls.

Pat Levin on Radio 5 Live.

That's the nearest we've come to a goal, apart from the two goals that have been scored.

Kelly Summers on BBC One.

Phil Foden is back in the squad after the birth of his partner midweek.

Karen Carney on ITV.

Gareth Southgates on his phone to his family or possibly his loved ones.

And again, it's Rio Ferdinand on TNT Sport.

At the moment, he's passing all the question marks with flying colours.

Commentator balls.

Back to politics.

We do have a new government and a new chancellor, though she has run into a few problems, not only over her CV, but earlier in the year when it emerged that chunks of her book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, had been lifted from Wikipedia.

We asked Rachel Reeves to reply at the time, and she gave us an exclusive interview.

I have had a long career as a politician, campaigner, civil rights activist, firefighter, astronaut, and pope.

I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England, too.

When I started as an MP, I had a dream.

I dreamed a dream in times gone by.

I was the first member of my family to go to university.

Well, all right.

And do you know what I did?

I got on my bike and looked for work.

The white heat of technology is the most important issue, apart from the pound in your pocket, and education, education, education.

And believe me, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

And I hold in my hand a piece of paper with a message to everyone, a message in a bottle.

I'm sending out an SOS to the world.

We're sorry to interrupt, but this message will only be up for a short time.

We ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia this year and whether you're able to give two pounds to the Wikipedia Foundation.

You were right.

The Labour Party has had its troubles, whereas the Conservative Party has received positive press as it chose a new leader.

Tories prove they are the party of diversity.

The election of Kemi Baidenock as Conservative leader shows that it is the Tory party that is leading the way on diversity and it is not afraid to elect nutters.

Badenock is the third lunatic since 2019 to lead the party, following Johnson and Truss.

Said one senior Tory.

The experiment with electing someone vaguely sane like Mishi Suna has been consigned to history.

And once again, the Conservatives have led the way in shattering the padded ceiling of stupidity.

It's also hoped that Badenock's election will stop the hemorrhaging of traditional Tory fruitcakes to reform.

Said Nigel Farage.

No, no, no, let me speak.

Everyone's welcome.

Come on in with no conditions whatsoever.

Hang on a minute.

Even I'm not going to fall for that old bollocks.

Pint of bark.

It's now time for something more serious.

Some stories dominated the news and In 2024, Private Eye was forced to run the headline, shock, as news story not about Taylor Swift.

But in the end, even we couldn't ignore it and joined in in a desperate attempt to get some young readers.

So here are 10 things you didn't know about Taylor Swift.

There are like 94 billion sequins on every single Taylor Swift leotard.

And if the sun is deflected off her outfit in the opening number, it produces a laser beam that can melt steel.

When her fans all shout Encore at the same time, the resultant rush of wind reroutes El Nino to the North Pole and increases the Earth's temperature by 10 degrees.

So the average resale price of a ticket to see Taylor Swift is more than the GDP of Lithuania, Swaziland, and Great Britain combined.

If you lined up all our ex-boyfriends, it would start at John O'Groat's and end up at Harry Stiles.

Taylor Swift is the great-great-great-grandniece of Jonathan Swift, who inspired her latest album, Tortured Poets Department.

Her parents met in 1984 and named their daughter Taylor after the British literary critic and Orwell biographer DJ Taylor.

Famous Swifty's include the Pope and Whitticom and Ayatollah Saeed Ali Hassini Khomeini.

the supreme leader of the Iranian Swiftomaniacs.

If you melted down all her gold discs, you'd be able to fill Fort Knox 20 times over or replace the fillings in the teeth of all the rappers on the infamous motherfucker label.

Taylor Swift has filled up more column inches in newspapers than there are sequins on her leotard.

See one above.

It was a year of elections.

Vladimir Putin, who's a great fan of democracy, took part in all of them.

British, French, American, no elections in Russia this year, but then they have a different system in Russia.

You put a cross over the grave of your opponents.

Anyway, the big takeaway from politics this year was that populism is still popular.

Who would have guessed?

You promise the voters whatever they want and tell them if they don't get it, it's someone else's fault.

So here we have the winner of that particular mode of political philosophy

the winner of the US election and he's now going to set out his plan

Hello

I'm going to achieve so much, so much in the first 100 minutes, more

than any other president in history ever.

There are going to be bigly changes around here, biggly.

So watch out.

Here's what I'm going to do.

When...

Stop all wars.

I've never started a war, apart from a trade war, and a culture war.

Oh, and an information war.

Then there was the civil war, which never happened

and which had nothing to do with me.

Fact.

But I'm not going to tell you how I'm going to end the Ukraine war in a day.

I'll leave that to my new Secretary of Defense, Vladimir Putin.

A great man, great guy.

Great man of vision.

He has a vision for a united Europe where all countries are one.

called Russia.

Two, I'll bring peace to all the troubled regions of the world, especially the countries run by racists, misogynists, and autocrats.

Autocrats.

They're my kind of guys, great guys.

Sure, people say don't deal with the Taliban, and okay, maybe they're not as tough on women as they should be, but

you know.

But they're very smart people.

They don't like women being seen in public.

And Melania agrees.

Great girl.

Three, I'm going to pardon everyone implicated in the January 6 Stop the Steel Day of Love, starting with me.

In no way was I responsible for our brave patriots storming the Capitol

after I instructed them to storm the Capitol.

Fake news, fake views.

Four, RFK Jr.

will make America healthy again by starting by banning fluoride.

When the kids of tomorrow go to the dentist, it'll be just as I promised in my campaign.

Drill, baby, drill.

By the way, RFK hates vaccines because his uncle, JFK, he had a bad reaction to a number of shots.

True fact.

Five,

get him out of here, get him out of here.

I'll put a top oil man in charge of climate change, someone who really knows everything about drilling and fracking.

The late, great J.R.

Ewing,

senator for South Fork in Dallas.

He's not dead.

It was all a dream, fact.

Now go buy yourself something beautiful, Melania.

Great job.

Thank you to Lewis for Trump.

A last seasonal story taken from another publication.

This is the Bohemian Times,

dated December the 25th, 935 AD.

King Wenceslaus scraps winter fuel allowance

by our political staff, Carol Christmas.

The reputation of good King Wenceslaus is under attack tonight over his controversial plans to ban yonder peasant from collecting winter fuel.

The king, good Keir Wenceslaas, got the idea for his money-saving policy when he looked out on the Feast of Stephen and saw a poor man gathering winter fuel.

He proclaimed, Frankly, I don't care if the snow is falling deep and crisp and even,

and if the poor man's blood is freezing coldly, there's a big black hole in the Bohemian government's finances.

And I'm not having every yonder peasant who comes in sight helping themselves to free firewood.

The winter fuel ban has been compared to the frost that night, i.e., cruelly.

But good Kirwenceslas is unrepentant and blames the previous king for creating an enormous deficit of tinder.

Yonder peasant said, The cost of flesh and wine has gone up hugely, and I'm thinking, frankly, of not following in his footsteps.

I think he's a bit of a bastard.

According to one political commentator.

This has gone down very badly in the polls and good King Wenceslas really needs to look out.

Thank you for that groan.

I gather we're running over time, but sorry, we cannot finish without a regular private eye feature.

It's a letter to the Daily Telegraph from Sir Herbert Gussett, a frequent letter-writer.

Sir, I write with reference to the story about television personality Kirsty Alsop's 15-year-old son, who has spent three weeks travelling Europe without adult supervision, and the shock and dismay this has caused.

It is a long way from my own experience during the summer holidays of 1936.

We were encouraged in those days to make our own fun and consequently I and two chums traveled that summer to Central Europe thinking it might be rather fun to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

We were trusted entirely by the adults to whom we suggested the plan and experienced no molly-coddling as we put ourselves together with our supplies of boat, tent, rifles, high explosives, explosives, cyanide capsules, etc.

Nobody dreamed of reporting our parents to social services.

Whilst ultimately unsuccessful, and whilst my two friends sadly perished as we returned at high speed across the English Channel, I myself returned unharmed, apart from the loss of a leg due to the accidents of an irritating meshesmith.

Naturally, nurse made a huge fuss about it at the start of the next school term.

However, However, it was a golden summer and one of which the kid-loved younger generation today could hardly conceive.

I remain Sir Herbert Gussett.

We end as we began with notes and queries and this is an encore

from a previous year.

It is a notes and queries.

Someone writing in to ask who or what is the Badenoch.

The Badenoch, of course, is the fictional creature from Lewis's Carroll's favourite poem, The Badenochy.

And tonight we have Sir Ian McKellen

with us to reprise his version of The Badenochy.

twas Kemmi and the slimy goats

did quasi-quartenes gimble thus.

All more don't were the Tugandhats and the naddy riches outgray truss.

Beware the Badenock, my son,

the flaws that bites, the boars that catch.

Beware the javid, javid birds

and shun the frumier smacky fatch.

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