Oh My, Private Eye!

Having never ever read Private Eye, Chris Horrie instantly placed it into my hands and told me to blog it.

So this is precisely what I’m doing, although I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing.

Apparently Ian Hislop has been editing the paper for 20 years, something which the central section is dedicated to.

Hislop has chosen his ‘favourite’ covers of the last twenty years to celebrate his editorial anniversary.

The front page of Private Eye is certainly distinctive and famous for its tongue-and-cheek picture of the rich and famous with comical cartoon-esque speech bubbles superimposed.

This weeks cover sees a story board of ‘Macca’ and ‘Mucca’ as the tabloids like to call them – they are more commonly know as Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills.

The speech bubbles follow:

Paul: Do you promise to make me look an idiot and take most of my fortune?
Heather: I do.

To be perfectly honest, I’m fed up with hearing about what is possibly the messiest divorce in history – it’s just so full of muck-raking, but a good example here of the kinds of covers Private Eye produces.

Quite rightly however, the paper describes the seemingly never-ending divorce proceedings of the couple as a ‘saga’.

What did interest me however, is that most lawyers actually advise against mud-slinging in divorce cases as it doesn’t have an effect upon the outcome of custody or the division of wealth.

Why, oh why then, can I never escape the image of these two in the news with a fresh barrage of mud having been slung?!

Moving on, some other articles that caught my eye…

The Identity Card Scheme.

Private Eye tells me that the Identity and Passport Service is actually going to recruit interviewers to find out if people really are who they say they are before issuing ID cards.

Is this not the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard?!

I’d genuinely like to know how interviewing people will ascertain something which has been a fact since birth!

What if my personality in interview circumstances doesn’t match my astrological chart and passport photo?

Furthermore, who is going to interview the interviewers to find out if they are who they say they are, and so on…

The Street of Shame.

Some quotes from the Daily Mail caught my attention and gave me a little bit of a chuckle:

10/10/06 – “Let them eat white bread – it really IS healthy.”
20/10/06 – “Eating lots of white bread ‘can raise the risk of cancer’.”

Oh dear.

Political Satire at its Best.

A play on G. Dubya Bush and his many ‘isms’ – “A Message From The Rev. Dubya of The Church of The Latter-Day Morons.”

Some closing thoughts:

I’m not sure whether I’ll be a regular or loyal reader of Private Eye, but it definitely added a little cheer to my evening after a heavy day of presentations.

If you fancy giving it a read, check out the website: www.private-eye.co.uk

And Finally…

The NUJ has warned journalism students “to have their eyes wide open to the fact that graduate trainee contracts from Richard Desmond may not be worth the paper they are written on.”