Page 94, the Priva Eye Podcast.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Private Eye office with Helen Lewis and Adam MacQueen. This is your 'welcome' episode to Page 94. That's right after 150 episodes, we have decided to, record a show explaining basically what the podcast is, we're gonna be hearing little selected cuts. We're gonna be finding out what this private eye magazine we keep talking about actually is.
As the summer holidays end and we all get back to school, we need some good reading to do, basically. And that's what Private Eye provides. um,
way like when American comedies just do a lazy clip show, 'cause it's summer and everyone's on holiday. It's not that, definitely not.
it's absolutely not
Can I ask you, the obvious question about why it's called Page 94, which is why isn't it just called the Private I Podcast? Why was that tossed out so early?
Because in Private Eye Magazine that all the jokes, no, not all of the jokes, but a good few of them, each issue end with continued page 94.
but actually it was just a very easy way of, finishing off a joke when you don't really have a punchline for it. and it started way, way back. I can remember, because, I wrote the, 50th anniversary history of the magazine turned up all sorts of correspondence, one of which was the original letter from Richard Ingram's, who was then the editor inviting, young Whippersnapper Ian Hislop to start contributing.
And one of the bits of advice he gave was like, if you think the jokes are going too long, just put, continue, page 94, and that's fine. It's always been a part of it.
So second question, Adam, why is Private Eye called Private Eye?
Similar reasons, slightly lost, lost to history. There were a lot of names, considered for it. So Private Eye has been going since October, 1961. it was always going to be fortnightly, because at that point they didn't think, the, founders of it who were, some guys called, Christopher Booker, Willie Rushton and Richard Ingram's, didn't think they would make enough. Money off it to be able to make a living out of it. So they had to proper jobs in, in, in one of the two weeks.
And basically that is how it's continued. we do one week off and then we all go off and do other things in, in, in the rest of the time. So that put pay to one of the ideas, for a title which they came up with, which was the flesh is weekly, so spirit is willing, but the flesh is weekly. It's a slightly weak pun. And it didn't work 'cause it was fortnightly anyway, the British letter that was considered the Yellow press.
which was partly 'cause the yellow press was an old, very old, early 20th century phrase for kind of like tabloidy trashy journalism, but also mostly because the first business manager, Peter Osborne had, ordered a load of yellow paper and it was gonna be printed on that. So it was a very basic idea for that. And then of course it's been going for 64 years now.
nearly 40 of them under the, leadership of Ian Hislop who took over as editor as a, an incredibly young age of, I think 26, in 1986 on the 25th anniversary.
So what we're gonna do at this point in the episode is we're gonna play in some of those clips of old episodes that you can discover for yourself, but that we wanted to bring right back to the topsoil, to the surface. Adam, this is one which features you, it is you and Maisie talking about the eyes, famous fortnightly lunches, and what sort of shenanigans go on at them. Adam, here's you.
I asked Richard Ingrams, who was the editor before in Hislop, what the thinking was behind starting up the real lunches, and what he said, we didn't know anyone and we didn't know anything, and it was a way of getting people along just to talk to them and tell them stuff. And people have this weird idea that journalism happens by a sort of process of osmosis that you just learn things and plug them from the air and put them in. But of course you don't.
you, do need insidery type people to come along and, and tell you stuff. And it's not quite a case of kind of official secrets being swapped over the cheeseboard or anything. It's really a case of, building up a kind of network of people, who might not necessarily, come along with five perfectly formed stories for you, but might know a bit of gossip from within the BBC or the House of Commons or the Labor Party or wherever people. Turn out and they're, a bit nervous sometimes.
And I say to, what's the purpose of these lunches? And and he says, alright, it's not a networking opportunity or anything. It's not anything really terrifying. Basically, we are gonna get you drunk and you are gonna tell us stuff and we're gonna put it in the magazine. at which point they, they look even more nervous and you've got them exactly where you want
them. It's an essential journalist activity for the magazine is what we're saying.
Eating lunch and drinking enormous amounts of booze is an essential journalistic activity for any magazine or newspaper. I can't
think of many other places which do it quite as religiously.
Newspapers do tend to do lunches, but they tend to be for a sort of select crowd of people. famously it was a an A Mirror newspaper lunch that, Piers Morgan, invited the eclectic guest list of Orica Johnson and Jeremy Paxman, and as recalled by Jeremy Paxman. at the Levison inquiry, you can go and look up the transcripts.
He told the boss of Vodafone that the security measures on his network were not good enough, and it was very easy for people to hack into, mobile phones, which is curious because it turned out later on he didn't actually know that.
The person charged with booking the right mix of guests for these boozy affairs is the, is Maisie Glasebrook. And as you'll hear the phrase, boozy affairs can have more than one meaning.
it's a difficult balance. you wanna make sure that you don't get too many people from the same newspaper for one thing, which has happened before when it turns out that all, 12 guests come from the same paper. Hillary, who used to organize the lunches before me and did a very, good job, she used to say you needed to have a lawyer. You need to have an actor, you need to have a comedian, I think she used to say, and obviously the balance between men and women. You want to try and get that?
I'm always pretty paranoid. I'm gonna invite two people who've either had an affair with each other and it's ended very badly, or who hate each other.
You surely can't be expected to know who hates everyone else in journalism, which is such a massive list of people. I
know. I know that's true. I can't put all the blame on myself, but sooner or later it's gonna happen. There's gonna be some kind of terrible scene and a punch out.
Is your own basically to stop there being a punch up at a private eye lunch?
a punch up would be pretty good. I think Ian would call that a successful lunch probably.
actually we were very proud because last year, after 40 something years of lunches, we had our first shag. That we know of.
I got a call, so I organized the lunch and it all seemed to go fine and everyone came back and said they'd had a great time and I was very happy. And then, the next day I got a call from the person who we deal with at the restaurant where the lunches held, and she said that she just needed to flag up something that had happened for my attention.
And I obviously started panicking and it something had gone seriously wrong and she said, no. I just think it's good that you know that this is what happened. Two of your guests were discovered after the lunch in the toilet together, and I then burst out laughing so loud and ran up the stairs to tell everybody I could think of, burst into Ian's stroke meeting, told everyone, and Ian said it was the best lunch that had ever happened. There we
go.
And better than that, they were discovered in the toilet and then thrown out from the toilet. And then half an hour later, they were discovered in there again and thrown out again.
Clearly the message hadn't got through the first time.
no, Through the waves of alcohol or love, obviously
Now, that makes the eye lunches sound very Debo. We'd like to correct that impression. It is not all like that. It is not all Ugandan discussions. over the years we have had some extremely professional politicians and some very serious stories. That have come out of the lunches.
Politicians are really interesting actually, 'cause sometimes you'll get sat next to someone and Maisie does a little potted biography beforehand and they all tend to say what select committees they sit on and what questions they've asked in the house recently. And you think, oh God, this is gonna be really, hard work. I'm gonna have to talk a lot about housing policy. And actually they turn out to be just fantastic gossips and really good fun.
Adam, that was you Ma g Gladbrook back in 2016 when this podcast was barely a year old.
Can I ask you, Adam? 'cause one of the things I'm interested in is that, and, it's lovely about reading a magazine, a print magazine is, it has a particular architecture and structure and private eye is a very distinctive one. So it starts with street of shame. Then there's HB source, which is politics, and various other bits and pieces. Then you get to a big chunky section of jokes, and then the back is the sort of serious investigative journalism bit. has that been there since the beginning?
Has it always had that particular kind of grammar to It
It grew organically. So when it started it, the intention was always, I remember talking to Christopher Booker about this, the late Christopher Booker, and he said the intention was always that they would do investigative journalism. In fact, in the very, very first edition back in 1961, they had a big thing saying, coming next week, the K scandal, the inside story of this, This terrible scandal. And actually they didn't know enough to actually have any of that.
So the investigative journalism really kicks in, mid, to late sixties. when Paul Foot, who's the ian of investigative journalists, he's ev any miscarriage of justice that you wanna name from the sixties, seventies, eighties, so the Birmingham six, Guilford four, the Carl Bridge Water case, things like that. He was heavily involved with both in his work at Private Eye and and at The Daily Mirror, which was a proper newspaper in those days.
he got involved and Michael Gillard, who is still with us, who is slicker. Who does the city coverage and the back got involved at that point. but it didn't really get that weird sandwich effect until a bit later on, which is, it is an odd structure. The only real explanation I can think of for that is that you give 'em about sort of 18 pages of grim corruption and mps being on the take and councilors being dodgy and stuff.
And then it's oh God, please can we just have some jokes and cartoons for a bit? And then you hit them with the kind of investig, the, miscarriages of justice and the people dying in prison at the end just to really cheer up their
So Helen, you joined the I so properly only a couple of years ago. Really? What is it like coming into an institution which has all of these layers of, in jokes and history and, it takes a, while to click in. even as a reader, let alone as a writer for
it. Yeah. I had read Private Eye for years before then, and I think probably having worked in the media, I particularly bought it for Street of Shame because I worked at the mail and then the New States menu. So it, it was about people that I. I was working with or knew about, but I always used to think of it like, and maybe I said this before, like Willy Wonka's, Chocolate Factory, no one ever goes in, no one ever goes out.
Like it just, it emerges and some people do have bylines in there, Craig, for example, Craig Brown. But you just is a kind of like it was made by elves. That's my, or, lumps
God to me must have been such a disappointment when you met us.
I know there was no singing, there was no chocolate river, but I think that's part of the mystique, and it's actually one of the reasons I think lots of people enjoy writing for it. I really love reviews and there's been a lot of discussion really about the fact that criticism is dying. that book sections in newspapers have been shrinking. It's hard to get advertising for them, and actually because of the economics of journalism.
Now, freelancers particularly don't want to write rude reviews about mega artists because, sometimes those mega artists will their fan bases will go after them. And so Private Eye is one of the last bastions of the truly. Brutal hatchet job.
and because those are anonymous in the book section, I think people have got free reign to say what they actually think, not what you know, is gonna ingratiate them with the publisher or their agent, or, do they want to make an enemy of somebody who's a very big beast in the literary space. So I think the anonymity is. Is really key to it. And it's also, it is a bit like maybe China and CHOC Factory isn't the right sense, but being inducted into a kind of weird secret society in a sense.
there is a private eye voice, isn't there, Adam? Like when you end up writing stories, you do end up writing them in a certain kind of uniform voice.
there's a sort of house style. you have to know things like we always spell Andrew Neil was named with two Ls 'cause he complained about it once we'd spel it wrong. So we've done it ever since. 'cause they're incredibly petty or, that the king has referred to as Brian, whereas his mother was Brenda.
There's another thing about the Eye stories, which they all have in common, and which is close to a house style. and it's more upfront in the sections that you especially work on, Adam, things like street of shame, which is that they're all upside down. So the traditional newspaper story structure, you put a headline in. Which contains the absolute most important bit of information. Oh, and then you have the, your first sentence, which gives that a tiny bit more fleshing out.
And then you put in the really boring stuff like the, we spoke to the people involved and they said, this is all rubbish actually, and we've got the wrong end of the stick. You put that in right at the end, A Private Eye, piece. It works like a joke. you have a. a curious headline at the top, which doesn't really tell you very much at all.
Then you start off with the kind of setup to it, and then the most important piece of information goes right at the end because it's serving as the punchline, which kind of unlocks the whole rest of the piece. I was talking to, I think, some of our work experience, people a couple of weeks ago and I said, look, just put the article the other way up and it's, and that's perfect. and
That is absolutely what I always do, Andy, I've learned over the 30 odd years that I've been working here that the, if a story isn't working, you literally just turn it upside down. You start with what you had as the ending, and almost always that sorts it out.
And I think one of the things that, Ian has said before, which is also very true to the magazine, is he lets the writers follow their obsessions. And that's the kind of eclectic mix of stuff that, private eye covers, but essentially is what are particular writers energized about and they particularly find interesting, which is quite an interesting way of working. It's, actually oddly a bit similar to the other magazine where I work the Atlantic, right?
Which is the idea that you hire good people and then you let them drive the coverage because they're gonna do their best work when they're completely engaged with it. for example, MD Phil Hammond has been really fascinated by the Le be case, and he's been given a lot of space to keep coming back to that and follow the developments in a way that I, don't think anyone else really has been able, like there's no other place in the media that has the structure in place for someone to do
Yes. And the same with T Side and Ben Houchin, which is Richard's particular obsession. But God, what a source of stories. and I'll think a lot of editors will say, we've, we've done this, haven't we? And really we haven't, there is new stuff coming out all, the time on that front. that's the other thing is they might be short stories, but God, they run for a long time. there is.
There is a court case, pending at the moment, a criminal court case, which involves some people that were written about in Private Eye in 1984 and some of the stuff that was going on in that particular story. we were advised when, when we were going through doing the best of stories for the, 60 year book in, 2021 by the lawyer, that we needed to black all of that one and another story out because, there was still ongoing court things coming out of it and we were in, in risk of contempt of court.
So that's not really a bad record. 1984 to, 2021.
So you've got Richard Brooks on T side, or the Post Office scandal, or PFI, or
think of it as Richard Brooks on numbers.
Richard Brooks on Numbers
the key to it is Richard Brooks wasn't trained in journalism. Richard Brooks was a tax inspector, so unlike almost anyone else on Fleet Street or what used to be Fleet Street, he knows his way around a balance sheet and he can read numbers and he answer. the number of times I've gone up to his, office in the attic at the top of private and said, Richard, can you tell me what this means with a, with some, accounts from, from companies house or something. He, that is in itself a brilliant skill.
so you've got Richard on that. You've got, Solomon on the probation service. You've got Jane McKenzie on things like architecture or conservation or, military housing, or a dozen other
Phil Hammond, who is a working doctor,
all of these people have been writing about particular things for a long time, a big chunk of the early episodes of this podcast. You can go back and listen to them. If you want to know about the Deep Cut scandal, the shootings of Young Service men and women at the Deep Cut Barracks. Heather Mills book on that story for over two decades. For a new reader to private eye, that might feel like quite an intimidating thing.
Like I'm not completely sure of this, whereas if you can distill it to a 20, 25 minute chat with a genuinely a world expert, I don't think anyone knows more about all of these stories than various eye writers who have been Banging on about them for a long time and updating readers. that was part of the founding ethos of the podcast is to say, look, these stories are a roll call of how Britain doesn't work in various different ways, all big scandals that have happened.
And here's your potted guide to
I had a conversation with our colleague Robbie the other week where I said to him, what are we actually doing when we put in I 1432 or I pass, or anything like that. is anyone literally going, putting down that copy of the, and going into their vast library of back issues and looking up everything else we've written about the thing, but I think in a way. signaling to people that this has got some depth to it. That this is something we've been following for an awful long time.
and in future, if they wanna be on things early, they're gonna get onto that. But also I think that is what the podcast does, gives us an opportunity to do. But, not everyone is gonna go and hardly anyone. You would be mad to go back into your entire archive and read through the whole thing. so yeah, no, being able to summarize them and, give the background is an absolutely brilliant opportunity.
actually, while we're on the subject of anonymity and assumed names here is Ian Hislop talking about exactly why that is the case and why it's so useful.
There comes a point in, people's career when they write for the eye, when they either get sufficiently established that they can't be fired in their professions anymore, or they just give up and don't care anymore and develop a skin so thick, they don't care. Who knows? But quite a lot of our columns are written by people inside the industry's professions. Businesses they write about and were it to be known who they were, they would be sacked.
So it's difficult for me to say, why didn't you interview them? Because that would be the end, not only of their career, but also of the column. 'cause then we wouldn't have the insiders anymore. I did think about trying to get you to interview people with an actor. pretending to be Jerry Adams or whatever, but it never really works that. So I'm afraid for obvious, obvious to me, reasons they have to remain anonymous.
It is surprising who's secret and who's not. 'cause you would've thought, for example, last, time we had Paul Vickers, who does Square Bashers military correspondent. You would've thought, oh, Army. Very secret. One of the most secretive people, is Dr. B Ching, who writes about trains.
Yes. compared to the Army, railways is a really dangerous business and people are very, serious about trains in a way they probably aren't about destroyers or aircraft carriers. Paul is, happy to be a defense correspondent, as it were. But, Dr. B Ching is, he's there in the middle of the action, so I'm afraid, from getting lynched by commuters or targeted by the rail industry, you just can't talk to him.
Are there any people who. Have one name, but actually they're a conglomerate of different people. I can't tell you that. Damnit. alright. How did it start? 'cause the whole magazine anonymous, how did that get going in the first place? that's not an obvious thing for magazines to do necessarily.
No, I believe it was a mixture of safety and the original contributors not wanting to give each other any credit. So I think it was a, curious mix. And it was the sixties, so there was a sort of collective feeling about, but one of the first people to be named was Paul Foote, and he was clear that doing his sort of journalism, you had to be a focus, a funnel. We still have people, who writes the business, you know who writes that, but there are.
I still maintain that it is acceptable to have certain people who are in the midst of it, who you just, you can't reveal who they are.
Has anyone ever started secret and then decided. Actually, it doesn't matter anymore.
A lot of people start secret. I'm found saying I'm terribly sorry, I can't say who they are. And they say, oh really? 'cause they've just done an interview in the paper claiming all the credit, for some piece. So it's quite tempting. if people are any good to start saying, it was me actually.
Do people get to choose their own nicknames? 'cause you've got. Bio waste spreader. Who does pharma? You've got old Sparky who does energy and power remote controller. Who does tele? Are these names that they assume like superhero costumes or are they names that you impose on them, like superhero costumes?
No, they are self-defining and in television there's remote controller most of the time. Then occasionally there's someone called youth who takes over when perhaps the older remote controller isn't there. Though he, she may well be younger. I'm not giving that away. And we used to have a farming was done by Old Muck spreader and the new person doing it felt that was out of date. So he became new bio waste spreader. So the nicknames change as do the contributors.
Is it helpful from a legal point of view as well as in, I think I heard something about the magazine gets sued rather than the individual writer.
It makes it more difficult for vindictive, liable actions, or privacy actions or confidentiality. You can't say, that person has betrayed a confidence 'cause you dunno who they are. So you just have to see the magazine. So it's helpful in one sense, but it's unhelpful in the sense that the other side can then say, you don't even have the courage. To come out, and admit who you are. I remember some barrister saying, that a contributor had displayed all the bravery of a rubber chicken.
So the jury may well think, this anonymity's a bit cowardly. Is there
anything in that, do you think?
I would say not, but I can see why they say it, but I would say in certain types of journalism it is, it's pretty important not to know.
Have you selected your own secret name?
I use Ian Hislop. which fools a lot of people.
we heard Ian earlier talking about anonymity of people, and Adam, as you said, there are a few people who don't mind their names being public, like Phil Hammond, md. anyone who's appeared on this podcast obviously has been happy to be named. but, one of the only actual names that appears in the magazine is that of Craig Brown, which is a really peculiar quirk, but it, I think he's the only. Named writer most
think it's just down to the fact that if you've got Craig Brown working for you, you want everyone to know about it.
So Greg does the, diary column. every week it's, he takes on a different voice or a collection of voices and just produces an absolutely bananas thousand words of surreal comedy that kind of are the bridge between. The jokes and the books pages, but they don't really fit in either. But it's, it's too good not to have. Craig is really good at that kind of parody version of satire, which does crop up a lot in the jokes pages, but he does it in a very specific way.
One of the voices he does, especially well alongside thousands of others, is that of Donald Trump. And we, spoke to him in 2016 about how to do Donald Trump. So this was during Trump 1.0. but it's about how to get a comedic voice. Basically, it's about how to communicate, a really strange character and make it really, funny at the same time. Here's Craig.
It is rather hard now that everyone's doing it. He's, it's almost like you nationalized. comedy, and so I was trying to think of that. I did one Melania, a lot of Trumps, which were all right. It's hard to gauge her cha. you can gauge her character, oddly enough, through her tweets, Donald Trump's, you read her tweets and they were very, Bland, but what was I suddenly realized was striking about them that she hardly ever mentioned other people.
She would tweet views out of Trump, towers of Central Park and pictures of herself or something she'd just bought. But it was though you realized it's very kind of lonely life. I then thought of doing Donald Junior's tweets or something, and I'm sure that would be a good angle in a bit, like.
Dear Bill, that was a rather good way into Mrs. Atch 'cause she was so done by satis and jokesters everywhere that actually, if you did it via Dennis it, it became a fresh joke because you haven't really been doing Twitter. Diaries for very long. No, Twitter. Twitter is a real godsend because it just boils down. Everyone's vanity and his paranoia and everyone just becomes more of what they are.
this is the thing, because it seems a bit like they were, you were more extreme in your Trump tweets in your early ones. So more than a year before the election. Yeah, it was things like, No disrespect to Pope Francis on his US tour, but the guy looks like a fruit in his frilly white dress. Fire. Your Taylor Frank, right? Yes. I don't like a loser, don't get me wrong. Jesus was a remarkable guy.
A genius at publicity, but clinging on with your hands to a cross that sends out all the wrong messages. But actually they're not too much less extreme than the ones that you do now. And maybe that's 'cause he really
hasn't changed, as you say. No, he can't. Change and he gets fixated now on fake news and that kind of thing.
a lot of what you do, I know that you study your form quite well, so whenever you do anyone, not just Trump, you get as many samples of their writing and their speaking as you can.
Yeah. That is one, that's a way of work avoidance. 'cause you think, if I'm, if I, it's easier to read tweets rather than create them. It's also a kind of laziness because especially with Trump, you can use. 95% of what he writes and just change the name or that, that kind of thing. But also I think that, with parody mistake people make when they're trying to do parodies, he's just doing too much of themselves and you should just let, it's like jujitsu or something.
You should let the person's weight he wants creates the fall.
actually on that note, I have a little game that I thought might be useful to play. I have got some. Trauma tweets and I've got some of your trauma tweets. And so I
guess I'll be able to do them just because I think you probably will. because usually, if I can't, and it's a, it doesn't say much for my tweets. 'cause I think there's, the thing about parody is you are, not just trying to recreate someone, you are trying to edge them into comedy whilst retaining their essence. And so I think if I can't get it, it means my joke isn't good enough.
Okay, we'll see. so this is basically a referendum on your jokes, right? yeah. Who it is, yeah. Yeah. Lightweight bands, Stars, refuse to play at my inauguration. Poor work ethic, unfair.
I guess that was Trump. Yeah. That's you. That was, yeah. I should have put some specific rock reference or that someone he was hoping to get who would be a very naff person.
Okay. Next up. Yeah. It's freezing. It's freezing and snowing in New York. We need global warming. I'd say that's Trump. It. Is Trump good? Yeah. Yeah. So it's one all so far. the cheap 12 inch square marble tiles behind speaker at UN always bothered me. I will replace with beautiful large marble slabs if they ask me.
Oh, that would be, I would be quite pleased if I'd done that. But I can't remember doing it, so I guess that's Trump. It is Trump, yeah. Good. Oh man, you've got
so many of them so far. one last one. Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly, they just dunno what to do.
I've seen he, he's done tweets which say, happy Father's Day, even to the losers and haters. And and he does a whole series of that usually. So in a way his are usually stronger than that. I'd say That's Trump, I'm afraid. It is Trump. Oh, good, Yeah. Oh, you've done very well.
There's Craig Brown in 2016 on donald
I remember years ago having a conversation with one of Craig's. Victims, I suppose you should call them someone who was parody in the diary section. Not Donald Trump, I have to say, but I will spare their blushes and not say who. But they just said, they thought it was hilarious, but also they were slightly devastated by it. 'cause they realized that one of the phrases he used was just something that they used all the time in their writing. And from that moment on, that was it.
They could never, ever use it again.
Craig actually has recent form with Donald Trump, so he wrote a book about, the Queen, called a Avoid Around the Queen. Really good book. And, in it, he just mentioned in passing, the claim that Trump had made that he was. Of all the presidents she'd met over the last 70 years, he was her favorite president and he said, a lot of people have told me that, I was her favorite. And we're talking back to the days of, Eisenhower here and we're going back a really long way.
Yeah. anyway, Craig simply mentioned this in his book and, might've raised an eyebrow and said, recollections may vary. At which point Trump was then asked about this at a press conference and called Craig a
Oh, the glory.
And of all the words you'd use to describe Craig, as you've heard from that clip
That's why he deserves his byline.
I think we should have another of these. There are so many different small sections of the eye, which have been going for such a long time. So one of which. is Dumb Britain, which is this tiny box of the eye, which has been going for decades now, and it's real answers given on British quiz shows, by real contestants to real questions. And it's compiled every fortnight by Marcus Berkman, who gets through an enormous amount of quizzing and quizzes.
and here's him giving a little guide to that section and how it arose and what's in
They're not there to illustrate that the world is full of thickies. Although obviously if you do watch as many quiz shows as I do, you realize that the world is indeed full of thickies, but it's not specifically supposed to do that is supposed to be, make you laugh.
A lot of the answers are chosen because. They're very apt, or they're inapt in exactly the right way. So for example, who formulated the laws of gravity after watching an apple fall from a tree at his linker home? Contestant answers Einstein.
Yes.
Yeah.
and the point is, some of these questions you have to really think about how anyone is actually gonna come up with any of these things. So for example,
yeah,
that one of my favorites, and this is from the, I think the seventies or the eighties, and we put this on the cover of a Dumb Britain book and the, it was on Radio Mercy side, and the presenter said, what was Hitler's first name? And the caller said, Hyle. It's the imaginative process that comes up with, with these amazing answers. Yeah. That is what we, that what we love.
So you presumably reject the idea. This is just a, snobbish exercise. 'cause the name Dumb Britain, it, does imply a certain. from, it does,
but, I inherited the, column name and I've never particularly liked it. And I've, I actually spent 20 years trying to justify it. And because people do get cross about it, and I get letters regularly from people saying, dumb Britain, sneering at, people getting things wrong. yes and no.
Have you suffered a catastrophic collapse on a quiz show? Because you do a lot of quizzes. I don't think the readers may know this. No, they
don't. And, I have a sideline and I'm a quiz master, so I do lots and lots of quiz mastering all over the, southeast, of England all the time and do about. Probably one a week, 50 a year, roughly. But I've been on a couple of quiz shows, and I went on, 15 to one, which I was completely obsessed with in the, nineties, totally obsessed with, and I think it was on two or three times different, on different occasions. Two of the times I came up with the most catastrophic errors.
the first time I was on it was, who was the Sun King of France. Okay. And I came up with the wrong louisie, although I, my, my brain knew which louisie it was, but my mouth definitely said the wrong louisie. and there was another one I was on and, I needed to answer one question to win the show. And William G. Stewart read out the dictionary definition of a stenographer.
Okay.
He could have said, what are those two things on the end of your legs with five toes on each? But, and, I wouldn't have known the answer 'cause my brain had gone. So I'm sympathetic to people who, who go on these chin things and make complete fools of themselves.
I think we can all. Empathize. There are times in all of our lives, and I still think of questions I've got wrong in quizzes.
absolutely. All the time. you did you know that in 2005, Ian, his op and Christopher Booker and Francis Ween and I went on university, challenged the professionals as the prior I team. I did not know that there were 10 shows and the top four scoring teams went onto the semifinals and ours was the last of the main 10 to be recorded, and we had to get 210 points to. To go on, which is a lot of points.
And we started, amazingly, we were playing tores and we started like a train and, his lot Booker and Ween, they're brilliant. They're, they know everything. And they were fantastic. And I got one or two things and we were working really well. And then we started ballsing things up and we were leading, I think 1, 3, 5 to 15. And in the end, I think we only scored 150 points and we didn't go through and we all fell away. And one of.
The bonus rounds was Ian's special subject in finals at university and he got none of them right. And he said afterwards he says, I've done, have I got news for you for 15 years? And that was much more stressful than any of those. It's, it happens to everybody.
Marcus Bergman. The thing that Marcus was really keen to get across in that interview is, firstly, it happens to everybody. This phenomenon of giving a comically wrong answer, an answer that's al almost not even wrong, it's so wrong, is a universal one. And that's the kind of glorious, joyful thing. And sometimes the connections that people make in their minds, is wonderful.
Like his frank, the someone who gave an answer to, who painted the girl with a pearl earring, the, famous portrait, and the contestant answered Frank Bth. Now what,
I've been known best for presenting breakfast telly in the 1980s with Selena Scott wearing nice jumpers, not known as a painter as far as I know.
Exactly. But what had happened was the contestant had thought, famous portrait. Okay, I need a famous painter, Van Goff. But in the process of saying Van Gogh had just, their brain had just garbled it to Frank Boff. And that's, those are the kind of glorious bits of dumb Britain. Those are the really fun ones. I suppose one final question to finish off, Helen and Adam, if you could send listeners back to listen to one bit of the podcast.
One thing that you think sums up not only page 94, but also private eye. Where would you send people back to?
I would pick Jane Mackenzie, talking about RAAC, which is a very strange, bubbly form of concrete. And I remember her coming on to talk about the fact that it had been used in schools and lots of official buildings and it was not to put too fine a point on it, breaking in a way that, that you don't really want concrete that you've made schools outta to break. And I remember thinking it was one of those moments in pri like classic private eye moment, But Jane, this sounds terrible.
Why is no one talking about this? and sure enough, I think about it was like you set your watch by it about two months later. There was a huge scandal about it, about school, the fact that the government was now on the hook for lots of money to rebuild schools that were built with this particular type of concrete. But it was a really good example of a story that on the surface looks really unglamorous, but just had a huge amount of depth to it.
And I think Jane was very prescient in picking it up and also. I've again, the private eye way of writing and the podcasting made a story about concrete, somehow gripping, which is a great achievement, I think.
Sexy concrete. Yeah.
Yeah, Adam.
I would go back. there was one that you and I did together where we just, we were talking about that way of explaining all the backstory to something. We basically did the entire mirror phone hacking scandal in kind of 20 minutes and, laid that one out for everyone, which I enjoyed a lot. but also, in terms of the, sort of the history of the eye, there was one that you did with, Ian Hislop and, Francis Ween now sadly retired, where they just talked. It was that strange point.
to everyone's surprise, suddenly the Maxwell family erupted back into public consciousness, with Ghislaine, Maxwell's involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and they basically did the backstory of, Robert Maxwell, her father, who had attempted to sue the eye out of existence repeatedly and failed before dropping off the back of his yacht and turning out to have stolen millions and millions of pounds from his company.
just in terms of kinda explaining backstories, those two I would think were particular highlights for me.
do you have a favorite, Andy?
I've got 150 favorites, Helen,
It's like choosing one of your children, isn't it?
I would say. That if you look for Richard Brooks talking about the post office scandal, it's just such a thorough explainer. If that's a story that you were interested in, if you saw Mr. Bates versus the post office, Richard and his colleague Nick Wallace, who, both worked on the story a great deal for many years, did an absolutely terrific job exposing. Just what went wrong and how and what comes next. And I think that's always really interesting.
And when, I do one of these long interviews with an expert, I try and say, what? What can be done about it? And sometimes the answer is optimistic and sometimes it's not. But it's always fascinating to hear people say, how we got here and what, can be done. okay, so there you have it. There's your guide to, not only this podcast. Thank you for listening. there are 150 episodes. Go back and listen to all of them.
Each one containing amazing stories about what is going right and more frequently wrong around Britain and the world today. if we've peaked your interest, if you are, I curious, the first thing to do is go into your local. Just go with it guys. The first thing to do is walk into your local news agent and pick up a copy. You cannot miss it.
It is the only magazine with a photo bubble cover in this day and age, And for those of you who have picked up your first copy of Private Eye, the next thing to do is go to the website and get, a fortnightly subscription. . we'll be back again with another three unlikely subjects yoked together in the podcast format, a fortnight's time. Until then, thanks for listening to page 94. Thanks to Helen and Adam, all of our contributors today. And as always do Matt Hill of Rethink audio. Bye for now.