158: Live From Cheltenham

Page 94, The Private Eye Podcast.

My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here on stage at Cheltenham with Helen Lewis, Ian Hislop and Adam McQueen.

We are here once again to discuss the last mag, the next mag.

We better start with the front cover of this week's magazine, Trump's Gaza Triumph.

The slogan at the bottom of it, world apologises, he's not a naughty boy, he's the Messiah.

Do we all owe Donald a huge apology for all the years of jokes?

Yes, and we're going to issue it through our lawyers.

It's official.

I actually put in a cartoon by Griselda, who's one of our cartoonists, and she'd drawn a figure looking surprisingly like me in Frontman a newspaper saying Middle East peace and the caption was oh bloody Trump

which I'm afraid summed up quite a lot of it there was also a stopped clock I think the speech in the Knesset was quite extraordinary I watched all of it too just because at no point did you know where it was going to go next that's unlike Trump

What do you think the American audience made of that?

I mean, I went to a couple of Trump rallies last year, and I don't think people listen to a word he says.

I think it's just like going to a kind of rock concert or something like that, right?

And they would just, there would be occasional bits that you do and he'd be like, oh, like, you know, like sort of playing Freebird.

But they'd be always doing the wall.

And then you'd sort of tune out and go and get some snacks in between.

So I imagine it was something rather similar in the Nesset, to be honest.

His main complaint seemed to be that everyone else had spoken for too long.

I mean, he literally said, yeah, good speech, but a bit long.

And they'd showered him with praise for hours and hours and then he decided the best thing to do was also shower himself with praise

obviously everyone's saying isn't isn't it good you know the first two points of the 20-point plan

have been achieved nearly that leaves quite a lot to go and and quite a lot to go wrong did you see the truth social thing he put up after his chat with uh putin and he said this is the great accomplishment of peace in the middle east something that has been dreamed of for centuries and do you think you've got two and a half of the 20 points?

There's quite a long way to go.

You might not know.

But it is very much his style, isn't it?

That basically, if he says something, that's it and it's done.

I mean, he's got two main qualities.

One, he's a bully, and two, he's completely unreasonable.

And those, it turns out, were an incredibly good match for this situation.

So

the kind of key moment really came when Israel bombed Qatar.

And do you see that amazing clip where he just came out for once?

He wasn't like camp fake angry.

He was actually angry.

He went, they've been fighting each other for so long.

I don't know what the fuck they're doing.

And it was just like kind of it had the exact tone of your dad going, I don't care who started it.

I will stop this car.

Turn it around, we won't.

The services, I'll drop you off there.

And then there was this extraordinary photo that came out where, and I wish there was video of this.

He's got Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, with him in the Oval Office, and he's holding like an old rotary dial phone.

And he's got Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone to, I think, the Emir of Qatar going, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sir, sorry, sir.

Orange against her.

And that was just the kind of extraordinary moment, I think, that Donald Trump felt that he had been personally made a fool of by Israel.

We are saying this is an actual achievement, because I tend to take sort of whatever Trump says as non-gospel.

You know, I say, well, if he has, if he is claiming he's brought peace to the Middle East, then he definitely won't have done.

But there does seem to have been a bit of knocking heads together.

Provisional achievement, right?

And he's got the hostages home, the ones who are still alive, and also he has made there be a ceasefire, which has allowed some aid to get into Gaza, which is incredibly important.

So even if it doesn't hold, those are some achievements.

And I think that's the kind of credit I'm willing to give him.

I'm just going to take a wild outside bet that he probably hasn't solved the Middle East forever.

Call me a cynic?

Yeah, you're a cynic.

But it doesn't matter because he's onto Ukraine now.

That's the weekend's job, is just to sort all of that out instead.

Yeah, he'll add that.

I mean, we did put on the cover, you've got to hand it to him, and then another boy saying, what, the whole of Gaza.

Which again may happen if the redevelopment into Gaza Lago actually comes off.

There will be this sort of visionary Middle Eastern dream.

Well, Tony Blair's going to be running it, isn't he?

The trouble with Trump is there is no loyalty.

So someone asked him, you know, the moment on the plane where he appears from the toilet door

and

never quite understood why he has to do this and give an interview.

Head comes around and someone said, Are you going to put Tony Blair in charge?

And he goes,

I don't know, a lot of people don't like him.

We could have told you that for free.

Helen, I mean, you cover American matters a great deal and you fly back and forth quite a lot.

You see a lot of it.

So one of the things you wrote recently after an exciting experience at the Riyadh Comedy Festival was that America is becoming more Saudi, just as Saudi is trying to become more American.

Well, so Saudi Arabia is going through this immensely quick process of change.

You know, it has de-Islamized, de-Wahhabized in the last 10 years under its elder millennial Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

I'd like to say that as another fellow elder millennial, finally we're getting to run the world, and it turns out we're quite bad at it.

But basically, so I didn't have to cover my hair, I didn't have to wear an Abaya, they are now having Jimmy Carr, the sign of progress.

You know what they say?

Jimmy Carr, harbinger of democracy.

So, you know, and it was just extraordinary that you had, and Louis C.K.

as well.

Jack Whitehall.

Jack Whitehall, yeah.

Basically, they now have to suffer like we do.

That's the.

You don't, at least if you go to a Jack Whitehall gig in the UK, you can drink.

I think that is an important.

None of my friends were that sympathetic to me going up there.

I was like, I don't think they'll get tortured.

And then I said, well, I'm going to a Jimmy Carr gig.

But this point of yours about America becoming more Saudi is

a fascinating one.

Under Trump.

Under Trump.

So my point about that is that when you go to Saudi Arabia now it's full of almost empty malls as if they're waiting for everybody to turn up.

There's a Jamie's Italian in Riyadh sort of just waiting for families to be disappointed by overpriced pasta.

If you build it, they will come.

There are other overpriced pastas that are available.

Plenty of them.

But so at the same time, all of those American brands have obviously piled in.

Cristiano Ronaldo is there, Mr.

Beast is over there last week, Riyadh Fashion Festival.

Everybody is just taking a bit of that Saudi cash.

But at the same time, the other thing is happening in the other direction, which is that America is getting rid of the rule of law, the idea of a kind of fair trial of your peers.

And the other thing is sending random members of your family to do foreign affairs work.

So there's a great line in my colleague, my Atlantic colleague Graham Woods' piece, about Jared Kushner going over there, and a Saudi says to him, The idea of sending your unqualified son-in-law to do quite important business, we're okay with that over here.

We don't think that's weird.

So, you know, you're having this, and if you talk to people who work with some of those Gulf monarchies, particularly

Prince Andrew was a trade-in for

Exactly.

Maybe we should an apology to Prince Andrew.

But they will say that the people in the Gulf like dealing with the Trump White House because they don't turn up and get a lecture about human rights abuses anymore.

It's just basically like, would you give us some money and in exchange you can have a Trump tower?

It's pure foreign policy, American foreign policy has given up.

Perhaps it was always a delusion, that idea of being a kind of the world's policeman or being a force for liberal democracy.

And now it basically is,

you know, let's talk business.

So Qatar for example is now a huge ally of the US and it's going to be well not only to give Donald Trump that plane right but it's it's going to be allowed to build an airbase on American soil.

So dearly deeply entwined with Trump's business interests.

He's got huge crypto interests in the Middle East.

And so basically the the person we should be doing an apology to really is naked corrupt capitalism.

Ian and I'll organise that.

Put that down the cover next time.

We've got to move on in just a couple of minutes to our next section of the chat.

Are there any more thoughts that we haven't expressed about Trump yet that maybe you'd like to before we do?

I look forward to the day I'll never have to have a thought about Donald Trump ever again.

Yeah.

But I fear it may be for some decades to come.

Is it going to happen?

Is he going to go for a third term, do you reckon, Helen?

You spend time over there.

I think he absolutely wants to.

The only thing that's on our side is time.

He's 79 years old.

He's a lot less healthy this term.

And I think people laugh when I say this, but he's a lot less coherent than he used to be.

But the thing that's fascinating to me is that J.D.

Vance, the vice president,

everyone hates him.

So you're getting that classic second term president dynamic where there's an obvious error apparent, but also a lot of other people are thinking, I could have a go, I could have a and I think that will be he has to keep talking about whether or not he's going to do a third term.

And there are Trump 2028 hats that they keep sending to Gavin Newsome of California, for example.

He has to keep that as an idea to kind of keep the the party together.

Because at the moment, being a Republican is incredibly simple.

You don't have to have any particular thoughts on policy.

It's just, do you believe in dear leader enough?

And that's the one thing you have to say as a Republican.

And everything else is off the table.

And of course, as soon as that breaks down and there's some idea of a post-Trump future, there are big divisions in that party about what they should do in terms of policy.

But at the moment, it's a non-policy party.

So basically, he's just holding things together with the force of his personality.

Like sort of Tito in Yugoslavia or something, it's all going to fall apart after him.

Exactly.

Well, look, we should turn from Trump and the Republicans to the UK,

from Trump and a party which has no obvious heir apparent

to

Labour.

I think it's very unfair on Andy Burnham,

whose performance at the Labour conference was quite extraordinary in terms of incompetence.

And if that's a bid to lead, I was impressed.

He didn't.

He managed not to pose with the banana, which was David Miliban's big, big mistake.

Do you remember that one?

Yeah.

It is weird with Labour how you get these era parents who just turn up and get talked up for about three weeks always as the great big thing that's going to take over, and then it just sort of fades away awfully, doesn't it?

I'm going to say something really cruel about Andy Burnham, but I had to live through a previous Labour Party conference where he turned up going, Well, if you don't want Kier, you can have me.

But that he didn't beat Jeremy Corbyn in 2015.

He had all of the advantages of being this, you know, the establishment centre-mainstream, sensible candidate.

And guess what?

He couldn't connect with people in the way that Jeremy Corbyn did.

And he didn't win then.

And now he's on his third go-round at having a crack at it.

I just, at some point.

He could throw his hat into the ring to lead Jeremy

and Zara Sultana's party, couldn't he?

I mean, they're not doing a great job of it themselves.

The third co-leader.

Great.

But I suppose the question I wanted to ask all three of you is: really, how did things get this bad this fast for Labour?

Because

the levels of unpopularity across the country

are extraordinary, and

it's quite a remarkable set of figures when you look at it.

And the really interesting thing is something has changed.

So if you look at every election since 1983 and what happened afterwards to the popularity of the relative parties,

every time the governing party loses popularity, their popularity slides a few points down the scale, or, you know, five or ten, and the chief opposition party rises up the scale.

This is the first time since all those records, since 1983, where both Labour and the Conservatives have suffered a drop in popularity since the election.

Now, that's obviously because of the rise of reform, but it is quite striking to see.

And Labour's slide has been really precipitous since then.

How has it got so bad so quickly for them?

Well, I think it's disappointment, whereas often someone says, you know, there's a new Conservative leader, and you go, oh, well.

But with Stanford, people thought this was going to be different.

And obviously, if you come in with a huge majority, there is a big burden of expectation, particularly after a long period of rule by the opposition.

And they disappointed really fast.

But the really odd thing is, isn't it?

They came in saying everything's going to be rubbish.

It wasn't like they were promising kind of like a golden unicorn for everyone.

They basically said the country's in a really bad state.

It's going to be pretty disastrous.

We're going going to have to really rescue it.

You're in for a really bumpy ride.

And still managed to disappoint, even after that.

And I think, you know,

a lot of people, a lot of eye readers, were limbering up to say,

typical, you know, you're having a go at the Labour government, are you?

What do you want?

The Tories back.

which is what people usually say when there's a change in government to private eye.

This time they just said, bloody Labour.

And you thought, then he got in yesterday.

The speed of it was incredible.

But it was, I mean, it was the suits and the glasses and the immediate freebies, which was sort of absolutely extraordinary.

I mean, if you come in on a wave of people being disillusioned and disappointed on, you know, PPE equipment, any number of sort of sleaze stories, then the first thing you do, literally the first thing you do, is give an enormous gift-wrapped cake

to the opposition and to the Tory papers to say say you're just as bad.

And even if you aren't just as bad, because the amounts were never quite the same, you know, we haven't got the Baroness Moan figure yet, but I don't

certainly haven't got the money and we're never going to.

But I think that that was amazing.

And then you went, I mean, we know this, you went straight into the winter fuel.

So doing exactly what the opposition did, which you criticised, and then choosing as a flagship policy something that's going to make you unpopular, These are not forgiven easily.

I mean, I've got a very simple explanation of this.

So, Tony Blair likes to quote Lee Kuan Yew, who's the leader of Singapore, saying, Basically, if you've got 2% economic growth, everyone's happy.

If it's under 2%, everyone's unhappy.

And we have had since the financial crisis basically stagnant wages.

At the same time, we've had an aging population, which means we just, to even stand still in terms of both NHS provision and pension provision, just had to find more and more money out of taxes.

And so I think people just feel like things are a grind.

They don't feel like things are on the upswing.

And I don't know if it's a lot more complicated than that, and that Labour came in saying we're going to get economic growth going, and people don't feel that yet.

I think that's true, because I mean, when Blair came in in 1997, there was a feeling, and they had more of a feeling of purpose and mission than this government have ever had.

But also, there was a sort of upswing in the mood of the country, which I think was largely down to economic things, that the economy was kind of improving at that point.

And I remember at that point, John Major and a lot of people from his administration came, well, actually, it was us that did that.

We kind of built the.

It was like, yeah, but you did do that after crashing it in Black Wednesday beforehand, didn't you?

I mean, you did go down to go up again.

It's a real benefit from, you know, if you're the person that happens to be standing when the economy goes into an upswing, you can take the credit for it.

The sympathetic view is that there's a terrible hangover from austerity having basically hollowed out public services, so they need a huge level of investment, like upfront capital investment.

There's a hangover from the so-called Boris wave of immigration, in which Boris Johnson, with his typical attention to detail, just had no idea what was going on.

There's the fact that

after Brexit, the Goalpost immediately then moved to the Convention on Human Rights and that small boats have really not been solved as a problem.

And the fact that if you're under 45, you're paying half of your wages out in rent.

That's the situation lots of people are in.

And lots of people are in that situation, not just in London and the South East, but elsewhere, of thinking, will I be able to have the kind of life that my parents had?

And all of that is the kind of everything.

Basically, British politics just went wrong at the financial crisis, and it's never quite dug itself out of that hole.

I hope you're all feeling cheerful about this.

But it's really interesting, because what you're saying is kind of that this is not specifically a Labour thing.

It's that Labour, you know, made some promises about reform, lowercase R,

in the hope of getting elected, got elected, things, they have not been able to restart 2%, 3% economic growth a year.

Is this just not going to be an easily governed country?

Because we will keep on electing people who promise they'll change things.

I suspect reform, uppercase R, don't have the answers to solve all of these deep structural problems.

I think not, Andy.

I'm sorry,

I know I'm a bit edgy on this podcast, but like I said, no, I like the idea that

they change their mind on tax immediately.

I mean, even before they've got it.

Usually people wait a bit for a U-turn, but I mean, he has years to promise that he's going to have massive tax cuts, and then he said, oh, well, maybe we won't now.

Right.

But aren't we just becoming less governable as a country?

Because we've got deep-seated problems that there isn't an easy fixable.

But you could say we're going to try and fix them rather than say, what can I think of that everyone will really hate?

The collapse in popularity is, I mean, other governments have come in and economically have not done very well, but they don't have these figures, do they?

They have made some weird decisions along the way.

I mean, as you say, the winter fuel thing.

I mean, that and then trying to revise Pitt Bennett.

I mean, to come in and go, right, who can we unite the country by really going after?

Old people.

Everyone hates them.

I see you ask.

The disabled as well.

We'll target them as well.

That'll work.

I think if you look at the fact that

this is going to be a deeply unpopular thing to say in any room.

Straight at the edge of the audience, quickly.

Yeah, I know, right?

Fellow under 60 brethren.

But I do think that actually the triple lock is unsustainable.

And I'm just, I'm sorry, you know, working at you.

I'm sorry.

But I think.

And actually, I I don't have any problem with means testing the winter fuel allowance either.

And the other problem is that, realistically, when you're talking about house building and housing costs, that is also an age-related issue.

And it was the one thing that I hoped would readjust the balance under Labour.

You know, the Tories were very much, their core vote was over 65 and they wanted to protect pensioner incomes and protect the green belt and all that kind of stuff.

And I thought, well, at least Labour will come in and they'll slightly rebalance it towards working-age people.

But as you say,

they ham-fisted winter fuel so badly in the middle of something else.

I think they're just totally terrified of revisiting any of that.

And the excuse is always offered, I mean, it was on that and on the inheritance tax, that

somehow the

comms team had failed to communicate what was actually happening.

And, you know, I shouldn't have to, you know,

accept winter fuel allowance.

I mean, you know, as a very old person,

I think I should get cold.

You should burn copies of the private IANNual.

Well, you never know, see how sales are.

But none of that was explained, and the means testing wasn't explained, and the and the benefit reform was not explained.

And everyone says, Well,

it's not the government's fault, it's their advisors, it's their PR people, and in the end, you have to stop making excuses for PR people and advisors and senior figures and all these people, and just say, Well, maybe the leadership is a bit useless.

And they need to explain policies, give people a vision, give people a narrative, give people a reason to vote for them.

And those are not negligible skills.

Yeah, I mean, Salmon does have an identity.

You know, he is a human rights lawyer.

Like,

he's a football fan.

I don't know if you know what his dad did for a living, but

he comes from a relatively underprivileged background.

He certainly wasn't sent to Dulich College like Nigel Farage.

You know, there is a story there, but it's one that he's always been slightly resistant and reluctant to tell.

Did something amazingly funny happen in the subtitles?

Right, all right.

We'll have it.

I thought it got more than it deserved.

Someone could just clip that and send it into Privilege.

We have a funny cuttings thing.

We get a tenor.

But you know, Starma hasn't made a load of money flogging gold services like Nigel Farage.

I mean,

there is a story that

he is able to tell, but is seeming resistant to doing so.

I do think also they are operating in an extremely hostile media environment, which

is new.

I mean, well, sorry, it's not new for Starma or for Labour, but it is, you know, it's new since the election.

Yeah.

I mean, the rearguard action fall by the Telegraph, the Mail, the Express was extraordinary.

Howdy, you write about it a lot in Street of Shame, right?

There is a phalanx there that the left has never quite been able to recreate in media terms.

Well, what I'm really enjoying at the moment is the bizarre alliances that are going on, particularly this story endless, really, really targeting Morgan McSweeney off the back of this book, The Fraud, by Paul Holden.

And it's been pushed largely by the mail and the Telegraph, but Paul Holden is about as Corbynite as they come.

he works with Andrew Feinstein, who was the guy that stood against Kierstahmer in Hoban and St.

Pancras.

I mean, this really is an amazing case of your enemy's enemy is your friend.

These are sort of not natural bedfellows, are they?

But they're coming at it from

both sides.

Does anyone fully understand the Jonathan Powell and China story?

No.

Have we got anyone in from GCHQ tonight?

That's good.

No one put their hands up.

You would have been sacked.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm a bit lost in the disorder, but again, this seems like, I mean, of all the things, I'm not going to give advice to Kimmy Baynoff, but if you're going to target Starmer on one thing, I would say that he's probably quite hot on the proper process of criminal prosecutions, just as the next head of the CPS.

That's probably something he kind of knows the details on.

Yes.

And he's not very convincing on it.

He's not reconvincing on anything.

That's kind of what we've been talking about.

I mean, he genuinely, genuinely loves Arsenal.

And if you get him to talk to you about it, he'll just be like, yeah, I really like Arsenal.

It's it's a really great team.

He just cannot convey even emotion that you know behind the scenes is genuine.

But

people want to believe that you know, Kirstan was absolutely straight, and you know, his experience as a lawyer means he really does understand the law and support the law.

And then we end up in a situation with this prosecution where the deputy national security advisor is somehow seriously to blame, but the actual national security advisor, Jonathan Powell, had no idea.

Goodness knows.

I mean, he's not there to supervise his deck, you know, his deputy, for goodness sake.

And you think, well, why doesn't he know?

He's the national security advisor.

Presumably what we think of China is his business.

I mean he's obviously he's not elected

and he's been appointed but that is still his job.

But it's all built on this giant lie isn't it which is the fact that actually lots of people if you talk to people in Whitehall and the civil service they do regard China as a huge threat they know it's always trying to hack us they know it's always trying to send suspiciously attractive ladies to live den party conference

I genuinely think that happened.

You know, but...

Okay, they're not that good.

It was the Lib Den conference.

I'm going to spread Jeanette Wide.

But at the same time, they also know that we are immensely our supply chains.

They come up as.

Jeanette Wide.

Jeanette.

That is the name of one of the Chinese spies who.

Come on, guys.

I'm sorry I haven't a clue.

Anyway, but that's the fundamental hypocrisy, is that everybody acknowledges that China is trying to do not a hot war against us, but certainly hostile actions against British businesses, the British state.

But at the same time, we really need them, and we'd quite like them, you know, to be on good trade terms with them.

So we have to very delicately walk that tightrope.

And that to me is in all the back and forth, just exposing the fact that the government can't maintain a consistent position on China.

Because it's like, please don't make us be mean to them.

We like iPhones.

The other thing that's really struck me about that case is kind of how low rent the stuff they must have been getting was.

Now we're going to infiltrate Tom Tugenhat's office and see what Tommy Tuggs is really thinking about things.

And one of the bits of information they've been trying to turn to.

Sorry, can I just pause there?

Because every time you've been trying to get the nickname Tommy Tuggs to happen, I'm going to get it there.

And every time it's been ruthlessly cut out, but I admire your commitment.

Every fortnight.

No, but one of the pieces of information they were apparently trying to pick up from these two guys was whether Jeremy Hunt was going to go all the way in the Conservative leadership contest.

And you think, just read a newspaper.

I mean, there's pages and pages about this.

Yes, why not pick up a fortnightly news magazine?

It's not James Bond versus Blofeld, is it?

No.

So are we just doomed to keep on electing people, being disappointed, and then electing more disruptive actors, if I can put it that way?

Basically, you're saying, is Nigel going to win the next election, aren't you?

Sure, yeah.

And would he disappoint, do you think?

Do you think the depth of talent in the reform

party

would maybe put on a better performance?

I mean, local councils, it's going well.

Yeah, I mean, you've had to.

I mean, nearly, well, some of them haven't resigned.

But

you've had to basically hive off a separate bit of the Rotten Boroughs page solely for the amazing performances that reform councillors have been turning in.

Yes, and

a lot of people say, well, if you give them more publicity, they'll do even better.

And I say, well, but am I not meant to cover the fact that

when confronted by what's your policy on special needs and potholes, it's stop the boats.

Which again, you can sort of make a case, but eventually they've got to run something.

And they've got to run something less badly than the previous lot.

Which, again, I mean, I think that will be the test.

So

are you saying if people vote for reform, will we be disappointed?

My guess is yes.

Now, we are at a literature festival, and Private Eye has a strong literary tradition dating all the way back to 1961.

So, I think it's time to hand over for one of Page 94's legendary quizzes.

And, Adam, you're going to be running this one, I believe.

A Grand Private Eye literary quiz.

Yes, indeed.

So, which poet laureate began a Private Eye column which is still running to this day?

I'll just have a wrong guess for a bit of of sport.

I'll say Robert Southey in 1819.

Very nice, very nice.

Yep.

Dryden.

I remember him in the office.

That's not true.

It was John Betchman who started the Pilotti column.

Sorry, I'm just enjoying the fact.

Kemi Badenoff was saying last week, oh, English degrees, they're no use for anything.

They are brilliant for showing off the things you remember 20 years later.

It was John Betchman, the nooks and corners column, yes, indeed.

The architecture column, which is still going.

Yes, and he handed over to the very brilliant Gavin Stamp.

It's now run by Jane McKenzie.

Yes.

Indeed.

And it's almost a sort of a cranny in the magazine itself.

Some people think it's the best thing in the magazine.

I absolutely love it.

Some people say, oh, why are you always wanging on about buildings that are falling down?

And the answer is because it'd be nice if they didn't.

And also that they weren't set on fire.

No, no, no, no, no, go on fire.

Go on fire.

That's the phrase.

Yes.

Strangely went on fire.

My highly insured pub has gone on fire.

Yeah, that page is a funny mix of charming heritage and blatant arson.

Yeah.

It's a really odd mix.

Crooks and nooks.

Look, the people from the Crooked House pub, aren't they going to have to put that back to the way it was before it went on fire?

It's very funny.

They have, yes, and there's also a pub in London where they did that.

They had to put it back exactly with the 1920s frontage and all of the tiling and everything.

One of those victories for Jane and the Nooks and Corners column.

Yeah, absolutely.

Right, question number two.

From 1977 to 1979, the I carried, very unlikely this, a gardening column written under the pseudonym of Rose Blight, but who was the real author?

Helen, I'm going to throw that one in your direction.

I've got this, my brain is delivering like Julian Barnes or someone like that.

No, no, no.

Think of Adralian.

Clive James?

Jermaine Greer, Jermaine Greer.

It was Jermaine.

Jermaine.

Jermaine Greer, indeed.

Yes, seven years after the female eunuch, that was what she was doing.

The revolting garden, it was called.

She was recruited by Richard Ingrams after they appeared on the news quiz together.

And

She resigned after he wound her up by threatening to turn it into a cooking column.

Didn't go down so well.

Did he basically go make me a sandwich, Jermaine Greer?

Pretty much that, yeah.

I see where that trolling happens.

So she wrote a gardening, sort of like gardening, what was the gardening element?

It was called The Revolting Garden.

I mean, basically, it was saying tear everything out of your garden and concrete over it.

So it wasn't your traditional gardening column.

But she's retired to run a wood in Australia, so quite on brand.

your bushes.

Andy.

That's going to be on the subtitles if you're not careful.

No, there we go.

Got away without it.

Concrete over your bush, that's it.

Thank you, everyone.

I think I should be employing the subtitle writer.

Or is this just AI?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I can't spell AI properly, so.

Possibly not.

Well, it has done.

See, that's learning.

That's machine learning, that is.

Question number three.

The eyes resident obituarist E.J.

Thribb went on tour in the 1970s in the person of long-serving eye joke writer Barry Fantoni, who sadly died earlier this year.

Which real poet did he share the bill with?

Larkin.

I can see it now.

Lads on tour.

Chucklesome, twosome, and E.J.

Thribb and Philip Larkin.

Simon Armitage?

No.

Was it

beat poets?

Was it Horowitz?

It wasn't Horowitz, but you're in the right place.

Alan Ginsburg.

Ginsburg.

That would have been interesting.

In the travel lodge in Chippenham.

Okay, we're just naming poets now.

Shall I tell you?

It was Roger McGough, presenter of poetry, please, and beat poet and member of the scaffold.

Yes.

Okay, Seud's Corner.

Which novelist on the eyes' 50th birthday in 2011 was crowned Britain's biggest pseudo, with at that time a record 41 entries in Seud's Corner and an entire corner also devoted to himself alone in 1996.

I was going to say Geoffrey Archer, but then pseudo-intellectual is not really his thing.

Does John Betchman want to jump in on this one at all?

Any ideas?

Jay McInerney featured a lot.

Oh, Will Self, that's a good guess.

Thank you.

Well done.

Yes, Will Self, indeed.

This audience is brilliant.

Have you ever rejected a pseude for the corner because you felt it was too profound and moving, Ian?

No.

Moving on.

No,

that's what I was just saying.

I I think I did reject when I was a student Will Self's cartoons.

Really?

Which he tried to get into a student magazine I was then running.

And I feel somehow he's always resented that.

Yes, it's your fault he became a novelist.

If you'd just encouraged, he could have been just drawing cartoons for us all this time.

Yes.

Instead, he went off and became a pseude.

Yep, another one missed.

Best known for her long-running romantic series Air of Sorrows, charting the love life of our present monarch, Dame Sylvie Cryn's first work published in the eye charted another royal romance.

Whose and which was it called?

What was it called?

It was called Love in the Saddle.

Very good.

And it was about Princess Anne.

Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips.

Yes, yes, indeed.

Yeah.

Again, this was Barry Fantoni who came up with this stuff.

They did these accounts of the royal family as though they were bad romantic novels, which is a very good approach.

And for years it was Dame Sylvie Cryn, and now it's Dame Head of Shoulders who's who's taken on the responsibility of covering.

She now does the King of Troubles.

And there are stories about Prince Charles, about Queen Camilla, about his aide-de-Berrycamp,

Sir Alan Fitztitely, who

is

the last of the Fitz-Titelys,

as it happens,

who

develops this rich home life.

His friend the Admiral and he, big ABBA fans,

try and direct the monarch into

ways of seeing the world that are less gloomy.

And it features, obviously, Prince Harry and Megan and William and the others.

And

it's a way of unseriously doing the royal family, which I absolutely love.

I mean, writing Sylvie Crin is incredibly easy because it's just, I'm sure you could all do it.

Don't let on.

Because royal correspondents are so serious.

They interpret pictures and small details and tiny bits of gossip and take it very, very earnestly.

And it's a pleasure to think it's probably, probably not what this is about.

Yeah, the first one was Princess Anne.

What was the one after that?

I'm looking at all sorts.

Andre Previn, Anna Ford, Esther Ramson.

I mean, we mustn't forget Never Too Old either, the Rupert Murdoch story.

Yes.

Very, very long running, as is he.

Yes.

It is just funny, the idea of him going on and on.

And his latest wife is a sort of life scientist and biologist who's looking for eternal life.

I'm not quite sure that's what her research says, but I think that's what it's all about.

And because succession, which I'm sure you watched, was so

strongly linked

to keep the lawyers happy

to Rupert's own life we decided it would be funny if Rupert had no idea that it wasn't his own life so when he lists his children it's it's Lachlan it's Liz

it's

Kindle Shiv

and Tom so

again it's a way of not taking seriously things the papers take very, very seriously.

And the Murdoch trial

in which he he tried to essentially disown

half of his

not half of his children most of his children bar one because they weren't right-wing enough to take over the company you'd find difficult that to make up

and then that failed so he's paid everyone off and yet he's still there And I keep saying, his mum lived to 106, so he's got a good decade and a couple of wives left in him yet, I think.

But I did have a sort of Trump moment of when he decided to take on Trump.

You suddenly thought, well, God, isn't Murdoch great?

This is what I mean about your enemy's enemy being your friend, isn't it?

Unlikely alliance.

Will you miss him?

Well, he'll outlive me.

One final literary question, Ian.

We've talked about Dame Silber-Crean, we've talked about Thribb.

Is there any sort of book in which, perhaps some sort of yearly collection, possibly available in all good bookshops and in a signing tent directly after this event, in which people could read some examples of this magnificent literature.

Oh, you've got me there.

Oh, yes, I think I do know what it is.

It's the private diannual.

Hey!

Which is a selection of all the best jokes of the year.

It won't surprise you that Keir Starmer is on the cover.

Charming lookalike with the figure of sadness.

And it's, yeah, roundup of the year's jokes, everything's in there, and it's all written by private AI,

which is a new technology that we've developed that involves human beings meeting together in rooms and writing.

It probably won't catch on, and it may be a bit late.

It has been a pretty crazy year trying to keep up with the news cycle, partly because Trump draws the atmosphere out of all news and makes it about himself, But partly because there's just been so much going on elsewhere.

And so it's got photo bubbles, it's got thrib pieces, it's got my favourite joke on the cover.

Megan launches a Netflix cookery show, lovely picture, voiceoff saying, what are you making?

And she's saying, money.

And it's even got the joke by Andy that a man was arrested for holding at a demonstration.

So might how you go with your copies.

Yeah.

Yes, got any more, Andy, that

get our audience in jail for the evening.

I'm not trying to get anyone arrested.

Well, actually, I suppose I am, but not readers.

We should come to the questions from the audience because we've had loads in.

So, let's start with one from Jasper.

Noting the demographic of the audience here tonight, are you confident that you're growing your younger audience to ensure the magazine's long-term future?

There's one there, I can see them.

It's all down to you, sir.

Yeah,

Well, as I always say,

I quote the example of

in communist Russia, Stalin going in to a church, which is full of old people, and he said, ha ha, what will you do when the old people die?

And the priest said, there will be more old people.

And when people want to come to what the eye has to offer, they're very welcome.

And also the readership are younger than you would expect, I think.

That's just that you're getting older.

Oh, no, don't.

Right.

You used to seem really old when you first joined, didn't you?

Right.

Let's have a younger, sprightlier question.

This one comes from Clive Field, 76 years.

Have you considered increasing the font size of your publication?

Thank you, Clive.

I think

we have done already, haven't we?

The answer to this is we've done the font size twice, we've increased it.

We've also, I hope you've noticed, run a series of ads for magnifying glasses,

reading lights, spec savers.

So the answer is, we do try and make it readable, but I think there is partly people find, as all the surveys show, just reading more difficult.

But I don't think, on the whole, our readers do.

And if we if we say, look, there's there's a whole page of type here, you might have to read it, I don't think they're going to be scared.

And certainly not at the Cheltenham literary festival

um i do hope you know the attention span will be more than more than 800 words well can we come on then to i really like this question uh no name from this question how does private eye remain relevant in a post-truth world where many get news from tick tock and similar non-news outlets is that something you consider something you worry about what tick tock yeah yeah i'd spend a lot of time on it

there is a weird function that the eye has kind of taken on in that it's become a slight correction center center.

I mean, certainly the Street of Shame pages are just for pointing out what bollocks that story was in the Telegraph last week and that one in the mail and what the story really is behind that.

So there is

an attempt to become kind of a reliable source of news at the end of it, isn't there?

And I think that is in itself a service.

It's just we run an awful lot about

social media and about how Twitter works and about AI works.

And I mean, I loved the story in the last issue of the video that Generic had made sort of wandering around, supposedly in Handsworth, where he wasn't,

saying, I can't see a white face.

And you look at the video, and they're behind him.

There's three people over there.

There's a lot of that, isn't there, about saying you have to do video, you have to do this, they have to do that, you have to be on social media.

And actually, I think about 10 years ago, people kind of said, I can't believe the eye is not going full bore onto this internet thing we've always heard so much about.

A lot of people are saying that to attract young people, you have to start doing podcasts and things, aren't they?

I mean, imagine

gross.

But I think that actually, weirdly, the internet is now a kind of, it's like Thames Water have taken it over, basically, right?

Yes.

It's just bullshit.

Superb.

No, but it's true.

Whereas...

You know, if you open up Private Eye, then that has been written by actual journalists and checked and subbed by other actual journalists.

And, you know, most of it you could probably be fairly assured is actually not just some hallucination of some AI bot.

And that's what I think is slightly, in a way, I also think we're heading for this kind of post-apocalyptic future where people can't pass around copies of sort of underground magazines to each other because it'll be the only kind of place where you can actually find things that are interesting and true.

Self-edited, yeah.

Self-edited, yeah.

We were discussing in the office last week when we were putting the pages together, weren't we?

And we were saying,

How could we kind of like Ape being more like a newspaper website now?

We thought big post-it notes kind of like all over the pages with really sticky glue on that you really have to kind of pull off to actually get at anything you want to see.

That's

your

the mirror website experience.

Yeah, you turn the page and every stuff on the page just goes blank and reloads.

That would be an experience we should bring to the magazine.

Right, we're entering entry time, so I'm gonna try and whip through a few more.

If, and it is a big if, as a panel, you were elected as the next government, what do we mean?

Big if.

What would be your first act to improve our country?

Resign.

Great.

All right, on we go.

How can we express support for Palestine without being called anti-Semitic?

Actually, someone did get recently arrested for a, they had a t-shirt that said Plasticine Action.

And it was about...

Was it Morph?

Was it Morph?

It was Morph.

It was a pro-Morph thing, yeah.

They were briefly detained, and then the police officer came over and said, I'm incredibly embarrassed, and you're free to go.

Yes, I mean, I think being...

being slightly careful about the wording, if you're an Oxford student at the beginning of your life, probably not a good idea to be filmed chanting about putting people in the ground

when they're trying to get people out of the ground I mean just a certain amount of care yeah

what intractable problem would you advise Farage to address in order to win his Nobel Peace Prize when he inevitably becomes our glorious leader

the crypto yeah well we know he's got a direct line to Russia so maybe he'll be able to sort something out over there start him small on one of those kind of Leylandii disputes you get in the Daily Bail.

Work up to something bigger.

Brilliant.

Oh, this is...

How do you choose your contributors?

And do you get MI5 to vet them?

Yes, yes, I've heard that.

We've all had the tap on the shoulder.

Yeah, no, we don't on the whole.

Though, I mean, I have had some experience with the security.

forces.

I don't know if you remember any of you when the plans for Desert Storm

were stolen.

They were left in a Volvo

by a civil servant outside the showroom.

And

I had the Admiral who's in charge of the denotice committee rang me up.

I mean this is security at a very high level and he said to me is that Ian his lob and I said yeah and he said you know these plans for desert storm

I said yeah and he said you haven't got them old boy have you?

Right, we're going to stop there.

Thank you so much for coming.

Thank you, Bingham.

We hope you've enjoyed the evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the page 94 theme from Bagarai.

Woo!