Ian Hislop

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Eye Studio with Ian Hislop, Helen Lewis, and Richard Brooks.

We've got some good news to discuss today, and I think it's important to start sometimes with positive news because we often talk about negative stories, and we, we talk about corruption, and I think it's important that we say when something's gone right.

So we're here to cover an amazing act of generosity in British political life, which is that out of complete selflessness, as far as I can tell, two billionaires have decided to give Reform UK seventy-two million quid between them, thirty-six million each.

Richard Curtis wrote this particular image.

Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, Ben Elton.

But it wasn't a happy ship.

Because he's still got this tension between these two men who both think of themselves as, I'm the splitting image guy.

Ratings have been declining.

The core writing team left in 1993 and were hard to replace.

But one of its original writers, Ian Hislop, had been appearing on a little show called Have I Got News For You since 1990, which was on the BBC and was an awful lot cheaper than Spitting Image on ITV and was getting much more viewers.

So is it when Ian left?

exactly

I used to love Ian Hislop I thought he was so cute when I was like six I was like that guy's the cutest guy ever yeah because he kind of looks like an old baby a wee bit yeah he is an old baby a wee bit like Yoshi from

Mario Kart but

yeah just such a cutie pie is he nice

You two are

like Paul Merton and Ian Hislop on What I Can't Use For You.

It's incredible.

Two old guys.

...

Ian Hislop.

It's reasonable, but, um, no, i- i- it's...

I've actually got, uh, I've actually touched the originals of those, and I've got photocopies of an original, and it's really hysterical, uh, because it, it was years ahead of its time, and that oc- it had a, uh, a letters page, and the blokes who worked on the newspaper wrote their own complaints letters.

It was, um, it, it was quite funny.

A, a, a couple of weeks ago, I saw on Instagram a, a clip of Ian Hislop, um, Private Eye editor.

Yeah.

I've got such a lot of, um, respect for him.

Like, why are we taking this seriously? But yeah.

There was an interview that Ian Hislop did at some kind of like writing thing in India where he said that something to the tune of in britain we are you are expected to laugh at politicians

and um

and politicians are just meant to take it you know it's a it's a hard and fast tradition you know all these quiz quizzes and game shows on television just taking the absolute mic of every single politician because that's what that's that's just what you do so the fact that all this stuff is very clearly getting to the Reform UK and all their MPs.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Eye Studio with Helen Lewis, Ian Hislop, and Adam McQueen.

This is your summer special.

Very exciting.

Pessimistic [laughing]

... with some beach reading for you.

And we thought, we, we did an episode last year which was all about, uh, political memoirs and the best political memoirs there ever were, and, uh, this time we thought, "Well, Private Eye, let's talk about journalism." So we're gonna suggest some of the best books about journalism that have ever been written, starting with Ian.

Uh, we've, we've each chosen a couple of books, basically.