THE EYE AT 50 BLOG
Adam Macqueen is the author of Private
Eye: The First 50 Years, an A-Z. He joined Private Eye on work experience
in 1997, and has been there ever since, apart from two years when he ran
away to become deputy editor of the Big Issue. He writes mostly for the
Street of Shame and Media News pages, as well as compiling the Number Crunching
Column.His previous book, The King of Sunlight: How William Lever Cleaned Up The World, was a chosen title on both Simon Mayo’s book club on Five Live and A Good Read on Radio 4.
Lama drama Posted by Adam Macqueen, 23rd September 2011
My book appears to be being accused of being “dangerously respectable” in this profile of Ian Hislop, the “Dalai Lama of satire”, in the Guardian.. Which is quite a claim, for a volume that manages to spread the C-word all over pages 68 and 69…
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Move over, Andrew… Posted by Adam Macqueen, 19th September 2011
Sir,
I notice from the “Book of the Week” section in Saturday’s Times that Edwina Currie has been showering the author of Private Eye: The First 50 Years with roses in an extremely affectionate way. I wonder if you have any pictures in your archives which illustrate something similar?
yours sincerely
Ena B. Major
(It’s actually from a photoshoot for an interview I did with her for The Big Issue about ten years ago, which I’m sure she’s long since forgotten. I wasn’t very nice about her in the article. Needless to say I’ve changed my mind completely now…)
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Please an ex-Sun editor and lose a Metro Posted by Adam Macqueen, 19th September 2011
Just when everything was going so well… Kelvin Mackenzie has described the Eye staff as “the ultimate journalists.”
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What I have mostly been looking at this weekend Posted by Adam Macqueen, 19th September 2011
A very good piece about the 50th anniversary by Matthew Engel in Saturday’s FT.
A piece with a very nice picture of the current staff in the Sunday Times (behind a paywall).
And a stonking review of the book by Edwina Currie in the Times.
Oh, and a long-lens shot of the author’s crotch – in church – in the Independent. I’ll be talking to Richard Ingrams again this coming Saturday at the Soho Literary Festival if you fancy coming along to see us – and it – in person.
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An Independent view (by, er, me) Posted by Adam Macqueen, 15th September 2011
I will be issuing a full apology and taking a leave of absence for my article in this morning’s Independent in due course.
For a properly independent take on the Eye, check out Ian Burrell’s accompanying piece.
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Dirty sell out Posted by Adam Macqueen, 13th September 2011
Crikey. It’s not even published for another week!
I blame Roy Hattersley.*
In the meantime, you can still pre-order copies (for a penny cheaper!) from Waterstones.
* For those of you allergic to paywalls: the best bit of his article in this morning’s Times reads “Private Eye: the First 50 Years, an A-Z — so glossy that it dazzles the eye and packed with coloured pictures, unlike the magazine — is different from the publications that are satirised as littering the ‘lounges’ of suburbia. The beautifully written commentary, which holds the book together, contains less than complimentary stories about the men and women who made the magazine it celebrates. And the text dares to offend against even the most sacred of taboos. One entry in its alphabetical list of published features is headed: ‘Diana — Princess, death of and subsequent lunacy’.”
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Cut and paste Posted by Adam Macqueen, 12th September 2011
Someone read the Guardian article this morning and tweeted “I can remember the first issue, which looked as though it had been run up in someone’s back room.”
There’s a very good reason for it looking like that, you know:
(and yes, that is an almost obscenely young Christopher Booker on the left!)
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Who guards the Grauniads? Posted by Adam Macqueen, 12th September 2011
Nice piece about the anniversary in today’s Guardian
And here’s an article about the Eye‘s covers from the Indy two weekends ago to keep you going till the book comes out in seven days time…
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What’s the collective noun for joke-writers? Posted by Adam Macqueen, 6th September 2011
A gaggle? Anyway, two of them, Nev Fountain and Tom Jamieson, will be appearing at the Chiswick Book Festival at 3.45pm on 18th September, alongside two other Eye contributors, Marcus Berkmann and Louis Barfe. Tom and Nev have been with the mag since 1999, the first new joke-writing duo to join since Nick Newman and some bloke called Hislop at the beginning of the previous decade…
By the way, I am reliably informed that the collective noun for cartoonists is “a whinge”…
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Talking books Posted by Adam Macqueen, 18th August 2011
While we’re at it, here are some events you might be interested in:
- Richard Ingrams talking to Adam Macqueen at the Woodstock Literary Festival on 17th September
- Richard Ingrams talking to Adam Macqueen at the Soho Literary Festival on 24th September
- Ian Hislop (possibly talking to Adam Macqueen, but we’re not quite sure yet) at the Cheltenham Literary Festival on 16th October
- Adam Macqueen talking to anyone that turns up at the V&A Lecture Theatre on 26th October. This one’s free, and you get a chance to see the two rooms the V&A have dedicated to the magazine from October till January.
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