Not Private Eye was a one-off spoof of the British satirical magazine
Private Eye.
The spoof of
Private Eye was published in December 1986 by
Robert MaxwellIan Robert Maxwell MC was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and former Member of Parliament , who rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire, which collapsed after his death as a result of the fraudulent transactions he had committed to support his business empire,...
, to celebrate his £55,000 libel victory over
Private Eye caused by an accusation of attempted
cash for peeragesCash for Honours is the name given by some in the media to a political scandal in the United Kingdom in 2006 and 2007 concerning the connection between political donations and the award of life peerages...
. It was printed using the facilities of the
Daily Mirror, of which Maxwell was the editor.
Private Eye, meanwhile, was trying to sell a Christmas edition (at £1 rather than the then-usual 45p) in order to cover the costs of the libel case, estimated at £255,000.
Not Private Eye was a one-off spoof of the British satirical magazine
Private Eye.
Overview
The spoof of
Private Eye was published in December 1986 by
Robert MaxwellIan Robert Maxwell MC was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and former Member of Parliament , who rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire, which collapsed after his death as a result of the fraudulent transactions he had committed to support his business empire,...
, to celebrate his £55,000 libel victory over
Private Eye caused by an accusation of attempted
cash for peeragesCash for Honours is the name given by some in the media to a political scandal in the United Kingdom in 2006 and 2007 concerning the connection between political donations and the award of life peerages...
. It was printed using the facilities of the
Daily Mirror, of which Maxwell was the editor.
Private Eye, meanwhile, was trying to sell a Christmas edition (at £1 rather than the then-usual 45p) in order to cover the costs of the libel case, estimated at £255,000.
W H SmithWH Smith plc is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It is best known for its chain of high street, railway station, airport, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, and entertainment products...
was refusing to stock it. During this time
Peter CookPeter Edward Cook was a British satirist, writer and comedian. He is widely regarded as the leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s...
led a "raid" on the
Mirror offices which, according to
Ian HislopIan David Hislop is a British satirist, writer, broadcaster and editor of the magazine Private Eye. He has appeared on many radio and television programmes, most notably as a team captain on the BBC current affairs quiz Have I Got News for You.-Early life:Hislop was born in Mumbles, Swansea in...
, he began by sending a crate of whiskey to the people working on
Not Private Eye, guessing that they would prefer not to be doing it. "We rang an hour later; they were all drunk. All the people putting together the dummy, drunk. He said, 'Let's go down to the
Mirror and join them.'" The group successfully gained entry to Maxwell's office -- where Hislop stole the
Not Private Eye dummy -- and, after making a certain amount of mischief at the
Mirrors expense, were removed by security. "I had the dummy, so we went to Smith's [...] We told Smith's that if they were going to sell his, they had to sell ours. So we were back on the newsstand."
Content
The spoof edition largely copied the style of Private Eye
but attacked its editorial team, including a cover which portrayed the editor Richard IngramsRichard Ingrams is a British journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, and now editor of The Oldie magazine.-Career:...
in a Nazi uniform talking to Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
. The speech bubble said "And if anyone objects, we say we were only doing it for a laugh"
.
Another example of such anti-Private Eye
humour was included in the cartoon strips, one of which, entitled Carlisle St, an everyday tale of libelling folk
, featured caricatures of the Private Eye
team making attacks against others as a means of making money.
The cover of Not Private Eye
also featured an altered version of Private Eye
mascot Gnitty, who was shown to be facing the wrong way (compared to his usual pose on the Private Eye cover) and was smiling.