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Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast.

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Andy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

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My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here with Helen Lewis.

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Adam McQueen and Ian Hislop. We are in the private eye office, and this is a special edition of

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page 94 because if you listen to the last episode, you will have heard us

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put out a call for correspondence.

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We have had an email address all this time, we just hadn't told any of you.

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It's [email protected] uk.

0:26

Last time we asked if you had any questions, and this time we are

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going to do a Postbag special. So, uh, I thought we'd start off with one from Nick Barber.

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Nick writes, welcome to the 21st Century with your email address.

0:36

Sarcasm to start still Adam: putting a post bag special though.

0:40

When was the last time you saw a post Ian: bag?

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Yeah, we'll answer the questions in about three weeks.

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Andy: It's a great point. Um, I've always wondered why private eye doesn't have bylines.

0:49

Obviously some contributors do so for safety, but investigative

0:52

journalists at other institutions do, do include their names.

0:55

Uh, so why not the Eye, not that I necessarily want them.

0:57

Just wondering. Ian: Well, it's very simple.

1:00

Um, if you give reporters bylines, they get a certain

1:03

amount of credit for the stories. Whereas if you don't give them a byline, then it's just you as editor

1:08

and you say, it's all down to me. I. and that's been the guiding principle.

1:13

Andy: There you go. Hope that answers your question, Nick. I Helen: quite like writing without a byline in Private Eye, 'cause I obviously

1:17

do write under my own byline elsewhere, but I dunno if you've ever spotted this,

1:20

Andy, but you do get an awful lot of grief sometimes with things that you write and

1:23

sometimes like just submerging yourself into the kind of gestalt consciousness

1:27

of Private Eye's quite relaxing. Adam: What she means is being able to say.

1:31

Oh no, I think that must be one of Andy's. Yeah.

1:33

Sorry mate. Helen: I mean, definitely there is a level of plausible

1:37

deniability in the book reviews. We are like, that was a very mean book review, wasn't it?

1:41

Oh, we could have written that. Adam: I like, I, I, I, I like it.

1:44

I mean, I know apart from the fact that I'm completely invisible after 27

1:46

years in journalism, um, but it, it. He takes out.

1:50

A lot of you are, again, I'm Andy Murray, right?

1:54

Yes. I like him. It's very good, isn't it?

1:56

Indeed. it takes away a lot of ego and infighting, which is a lot of the stuff I find

2:01

myself writing about in Street of Shame and all that byline, atory and stuff

2:04

that you can just, um, you go in and, and, and there is a sort of Private

2:07

Eye voice that you take on as well. Mm-Hmm. Yes. Um, which is different for different sections as well.

2:11

I mean, the, the, the tone of the book reviews is. Is different to, you know, the Street Of Shame stuff is different again to

2:16

the, in the back stuff, but it does allow you that sort of sarcasm and

2:19

all the catchphrases and the uhs and continued page 90 fours and all those

2:23

things you can kind of throw in. Ian: One of the things you learn over the years is people who say,

2:27

look, I don't want anyone to know that I write for Private Eye.

2:30

And then everyone you know says, oh, I was at a dinner party, he was telling

2:34

me how brilliant his latest piece was. So there, there's a certain outing of yourself that goes on, but if

2:40

you don't want to and you literally want to work from inside your field

2:44

without anyone knowing it, that is possible , through not using a byline.

2:48

And, and people say, well, it means that you are not accountable

2:51

or transparent or responsible. You are. It's just all the shit comes one way and it's not to the writer.

2:57

Andy: there was someone who just on the outing oneself, subject,

3:01

it was a very long piece as well. It was kind of a sort of special section.

3:04

It was someone teaching, it was someone at a school who

3:07

was writing about the teacher. Yeah. Teacher. And it was great.

3:10

And I think he, I think it was a, he was quite secret.

3:12

He was. Adam: I handled that. I kind of edited that supplement.

3:15

It was a, it was a four page pullout thing. It was a diary of a teacher at a comprehensive of school.

3:19

It was really, really real well written. But he was so paranoid about his identity coming out.

3:23

We had to do everything through sort of, um... burner phones and, and kind of anonymous emails and all sorts of things.

3:29

And the second it was published after we'd taken all of this care

3:32

over it, he just couldn't resist. "It was me.

3:34

It was me. It was me." And immediately got sacked from his job.

3:37

Helen: I was gonna say, the other thing about Private Eye being largely anonymous is the fact it adds a certain glamor to it.

3:41

Right? I always used to think of it like being Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

3:44

Like no one ever goes in, no one ever comes out and we are just a little,

3:48

Umpa Loompas toiling away in obscurity.

3:50

But I should say, it also means sometimes people could

3:53

pretend to work for Private Eye. Quite famously, Heather Mills McCartney, as she was then, tried to confuse

3:58

herself with our Heather Mills and pass herself off as investigative journalist.

4:02

So yeah, Ian: And particularly at local level, you often get people writing and

4:05

saying, I had a call from one of your journalists, and I, I say any indication

4:10

who, because I've never heard of them.

4:13

so there's a certain amount of that goes on, but I think on the whole,

4:17

the system works and then the pay is sort of Oompa Loompa level.

4:25

All the Adam: chocolate you can eat, drink from the river.

4:29

on a historical note, um, with the, there were originally, I'm not quite bylines,

4:32

but the, the, there was a staff list at the front of every edition, and the

4:35

real reason that that disappeared was because in 1967, off the top of my head,

4:40

Randolph Churchill, son of Winston, uh, sued the Eye and sued personally everyone

4:44

who was listed on that staff list. We got the writ in a frame downstairs.

4:47

The weird thing is a lot of them, they, they were listed by like, their sort

4:50

of in-office nicknames and things. So this, this very, very formal legal document arrived, addressed

4:55

to people who didn't really exist. But that was the reason at that point was I think legal advice was taken

5:00

that it was a very bad idea that people could be sued personally.

5:03

And so from that point on, everything has been anonymous.

5:05

Andy: Okay, next up. Rory McClellan writes, I've been a subscriber for almost two decades now.

5:10

Thank you, Rory. Magazines available private-eye.co.Uk.

5:14

Just putting it in there, um, and have lost count of the times the Eye has

5:17

reported a big story that takes years to filter through into the newspapers.

5:20

Why are stories the Eye reports on often ignored by the rest

5:24

of the media for so long? Do none of them read the mag?

5:28

Best wishes, Rory. That's nice, isn't it? Adam: They definitely do read the mag 'cause they're quite quick

5:32

to complain when we write about them in the Street Of Shame pages.

5:35

They can say that. Ian: what? I think it's just because the eye has an ability to repeat.

5:40

that's when, , people notice that we've gone on and on and on

5:44

about this and, and finally it breaks or it turns up elsewhere.

5:47

I mean, the truth is everybody picks which stories they run and

5:51

a lot of other institutions don't want to run this type of story so

5:55

they don't, and it's that simple. Why don't they pick up on it?

5:58

'cause they don't want to. that's it. Helen: also it's a downside of doing original reporting, isn't it?

6:02

Rather than commentary, which is if you've done original reporting that's

6:04

based on a key source that only you know who they are or documents only you've

6:08

got access to, it's quite a big punt as another news organization to follow that

6:11

up without having the same level of legal security of that source or that document.

6:16

So I think sometimes the Eye's hampered by the fact its own brand

6:20

of actually doing the, the legwork. You know, if something is, is absolutely public and everybody can

6:24

have an opinion on it, then one... people write that up and you know, and that stuff gets

6:28

just followed up everywhere. But actually when you're doing legally risky stuff, it's harder

6:32

to get it followed up for that Adam: reason. And it's a naturally journalistic thing as well, which applies here as

6:37

well, that we won't follow up a story.

6:40

that's been run elsewhere unless there is something

6:42

significant that we can add to it. So, I mean, news Desk, you're gonna face that problem.

6:45

If someone says, I've read this brilliant story in Private Eye, it's like, well,

6:48

okay, it's been done in Private Eye. How do we move it on?

6:50

As you say, if, if, if we've got the whistleblowers, we've got

6:53

the context, it's, it's there. I mean, I have a few times over, um, the years I've been working here,

6:58

people from national papers phone me up and say, look, I'd really

7:00

like to do something on this story. Is there anything, anyone you can pass on to me?

7:03

And. The best I can say in that situation is I will tell the person that I've been

7:07

talking to that you are interested. I can pass on your contact details, but obviously, you know, people come to us.

7:11

Anonymity is the, the most important part of it in protecting our contacts.

7:15

So it, there is a sort of logistical difficulty as, as well to following

7:18

these things up, as you say, Ian: But also the people who write commentary and opinion in other papers

7:22

often don't want that particular story.

7:26

I mean, the reason the Post Office story, did not get taken up for a very long time

7:30

is because of the Government and the Post Office and the Horizon span really hard.

7:35

Um, and they wrote aggressive letters the second you followed up

7:39

anything that originally competed weekly or then that we had written.

7:43

People then shied away from it. and so nobody wanted to say, isn't this a scandal?

7:48

when they had, you know, a barrage of, abusive and threatening letters coming

7:53

their way from particularly, you know, with establishment papers, um, government

7:58

sources attached to them, you know, and were in the middle of a row about, um.

8:02

What, uh, Kemi Badenoch did and or didn't say.

8:06

and all I can say at this point is, they haven't got a very good record

8:10

on telling the truth, have they? And we get a very, very, you know, sort of sniffy letter from, um, Kevin Hore

8:17

mp, who's supposedly in charge of the post office, um, at the moment saying,

8:22

well, that picture you, you ran of me.

8:25

A long time ago at a Fujitsu fundraising table.

8:27

Look, there's not a conspiracy. And then today he says, yeah, when the bloke was fired, I wasn't actually on

8:33

the call, so I don't know what happened. You are the, what is it, Minister for the Post Office.

8:37

It says here on your letter. so it, there is a problem in, following these stories when the pushback is

8:44

so hard from government and those

8:47

Helen: involved, but also I think there's the fact that stories sometimes

8:49

only catch fire when they're part of a narrative or being pushed by

8:52

a particular campaign group or as part of a partisan political route.

8:56

So, the worst mass shooting in American history was the Las Vegas shooting.

9:00

But it wasn't, it doesn't mean anything if you see what I mean.

9:02

It was just a terrible tragedy. It wasn't a white nationalist, it wasn't an Islamist, it was

9:06

just a man who was mentally ill, had a grudge and a lot of guns.

9:09

And so it doesn't really get remembered in the way that lots

9:11

of other terrorist atrocities do.

9:14

And there's a similar thing happened with the Panama Papers,

9:16

which were the, um, documents about tax evasion and tax avoidance.

9:21

And David Cameron's father had had an offshore trust, and this

9:23

was reported at the time and then reheated during the Brexit campaign

9:27

when suddenly everyone kind of fell about going, this is terrible.

9:29

David Cameron's father involved in offshore trust, and it was because at

9:33

that point he wasn't Tory leader, he was leader of the Remain campaign, and

9:37

it had obviously been briefed against the leader of the Remain campaign.

9:41

And so I think the Post Office is a classic example of this.

9:43

Everyone came out of it badly. It wasn't like Labour could go, ah, the terrible Tories, because you're

9:47

like, and who set up the contract with Fujitsu in the first place?

9:51

It was new times with Smoosh maba and, and I think that's something that as

9:54

well, that really stops stories getting followed up is if they don't help anyone's

9:57

agenda to advance them, then they can just be a terrible thing that happened.

10:02

Ian: Yes or just wrong or an offense to national justice.

10:06

All right. Adam: Any of those, those old fashioned ideas?

10:09

Yes. Andy: Here's a good follow up, which is about the long

10:13

running stories that the I does. It's kind of related. So this is from Chris Brown.

10:16

Um, who decides what stories to pursue doggedly for decades Post Office...

10:20

Teesworks, and why? Is it the experienced journalistic judgment or preconception of the

10:25

editor, the enthusiasm or sources of the journalist or something else?

10:29

Ian: Good question. Uh, but all of those, yeah.

10:32

Um, and I mean, as editor, I, I freely take any amount of credit, but also I

10:38

will admit there are times in any long running campaign where the piece comes

10:42

in and I say, oh God, is it this again?

10:45

Um, uh, do we have, we've

10:47

Andy: never had this acknowledged before. This is

10:50

Ian: good to know. Uh, and then the, uh, journalist correctly then says, yes, you

10:56

do have to run this again. A, because I've written it.

10:59

and B, because it's important. and then I say I'm only trying to reflect the limited, um, attention

11:05

span of our readers, and try and protect that, which again, is a very

11:09

unconvincing argument if you are the journalist who's just written it.

11:13

So on the whole, yes, it's a mixture of those things and we have the amazing

11:17

luxury, of, being able to repeat because there's so much else, , in the

11:21

news pages and there are the jokes. As I explained to a, an American PhD student, um, the Eye operates on the

11:29

principle of, um, Mary Poppins, , uh, the leading philosopher, the spoonful

11:34

of sugar, helping the medicine go down.

11:37

And I hope that is now in the vaults of, of, of a very big American university.

11:42

Andy: I think of it as a bit like a loaf of bread, you know, the outer edge.

11:45

You've got the crust, which is. Sometimes a little harder to get through, but I think is better for you.

11:52

And on the absolute inside, you've got the very softest bit of the loaf, which

11:55

is the most fun to eat , but it doesn't contain as much of the, you know, the

11:59

really difficult, nutritious stuff. Everyone. I'm getting three blank faces for everyone.

12:02

No. Adam: Spoonful of sugar, loaf of bread listeners.

12:05

What food stuff do you think? Private eye mustard.

12:08

Helen: I think it's, I think it's salt. It's salted caramel.

12:11

Okay. It's like, but everything is better with it.

12:13

You can't have too much of one. Things that are one note are bad, right?

12:16

Mm-Hmm. So actually everything has to have some balance to it. So come on.

12:19

Adam, you're the only one who hasn't thought of a food that we are

12:22

Adam: a potato, reliable, starchy, and the mainstay of, uh, nutrition and

12:29

Ian: about to get mashed. Andy: so [email protected] uk.

12:34

Tell us which food you think the Eye is most like, and we'll maybe cover

12:38

some of them in the next few episodes.

12:41

here is, here is a really difficult one. Now I don't, I don't think you've seen all these questions, uh, or I hope

12:45

you haven't, but William Nash writes. Hello.

12:47

Love the podcast. Thank you, William. Uh, I love private eye, but sometimes it's also bleak.

12:51

I have to tune out to save myself. Can you tell me one thing you like about the British political establishment

12:58

and one thing the bloody Torries have done well in the last 14 years?

13:03

Yours positively, William. Adam: Go with one thing, the Tory government, or it was the coalition

13:08

government at the time have done, uh, which I personally benefited

13:11

from, which was equal marriage. There we go.

13:15

And that's why my list stops. Helen: I think that's quite a good one because Cameron

13:20

said, um, of, of gay marriage. I support it not in spite of being a Conservative, but

13:24

because of being a Conservative. So he found a way to work equal rights into an absolutely, you know, into a right

13:31

wing story that was about family and being grounded in a community and all of those

13:35

kind of traditionally Conservative values. I think that was genuinely groundbreaking.

13:38

If you look across at America, you know, I think where the LGBT picture

13:42

is much more polarized at and what has happened in Britain over that, it's

13:46

just has been genuinely very good. I'm, I'm gonna row behind you on that one.

13:49

It's absolute Adam: sea change in attitudes that just.

13:53

Extraordinarily quick and then afterwards, you know, you've got a gener,

13:56

not even just a younger generation, but a generation above it as well.

13:59

We're just going, well, what was all that about? We just, you know, in terms of social attitudes, we just moved on.

14:04

Yeah. And that was something you have to give Cameron credit for that. He spotted that and, and uh, and I

14:08

Helen: go to those cranky conservative conferences where,

14:10

you know, still abortion is still a huge culture war issue, but

14:12

just, yeah, gay rights is just not. It's just not somewhere that they even go actually at all.

14:16

There's just no, there are no votes in being homophobic.

14:20

I'm gonna say the, um, passport office, which is slightly less important

14:24

than equal rights for for gay people. But nonetheless, it has been a quiet success story.

14:28

It was an absolute shambles during the pandemic. And now actually you can get a passport quite quickly.

14:33

That's great. And they should tell everyone else in Whitehall what the

14:36

magic was that they did. I didn't know that.

14:38

That's fantastic. Interesting. Well, again, as the correspondent notes, those things don't get reported on

14:43

"Passport Office in Shamble; no one can go on half term holiday," is a story.

14:46

"Passport office working as intended...." Adam: it is oddly harder to see.

14:50

I think there have been actually, I mean I know we've reported a

14:52

lot on waste in government IT projects and things, but there are

14:55

a few things that actually quietly digitally work really, really well.

14:57

Now. Things like renewing your car tax and that sort of thing that you can just do online.

15:01

Uh, like astonishingly efficient and I dunno where though those

15:05

may be long term projects. I couldn't date you when that sort of stuff.

15:08

But little, little tweaks like that have have gone on in the background

15:11

that I think have made things better. Gov.uk Helen: uK is actually

15:13

a very useful website. Like doing your tax return here compared to doing an American

15:17

tax return is like almost kind of getting a present from God itself.

15:20

Um, so there are, there are things, I mean, it kind of has to be better digitally

15:23

'cause you cannot get through to anyone at HMRC online on the phone.

15:27

That's the problem. Any advice from anyone but,

15:29

Ian: People are very, very keen that I should at some point say, , well, apart

15:32

from these rude stories we've, we've written about the government, they're

15:35

marvelous in, in the following ways. And I try not to do that because when, when the government changes,

15:40

I'll have the next slot in. Um, but I'll say, well, you never said that at the time.

15:44

So. I mean, once or twice I'm persuaded by people to put in a good news

15:48

corner where something happens that isn't absolutely terrible or isn't

15:52

quite as bad as it could have been. But on the whole, we are a satirical magazine and an investigative

15:57

and campaigning journal, and I.

16:01

We are not running upbeat stories.

16:04

Um, and that is the nature of the beast and the reason that, um, a lot of, uh,

16:07

readers have, have pointed this out. They read those bits and there are 50 cartoons.

16:13

Um, and those are all good news in their way.

16:16

Yeah. No one ever wrote Andy: to Jonathan Swift saying, I really like book two of Guive travels, but I

16:21

just wonder the next one, can it be a bit, Ian: a bit more cheerful and that it's a bit bleak, isn't it?

16:26

Yeah. Isn't it John? Yeah. Andy: well, my thing, the victories have done well.

16:29

Austerity, I just thought it was a really well thought out work really well.

16:34

okay, here is a, here's an interesting one and, uh, it's, it's from Ben.

16:38

Ben writes high team, can you help me understand something? Please?

16:40

Some of the polling. Commentators and podcasts have been predicting the collapse of the Tory party,

16:46

uh, massive drop in mps donors leave potentially not the official opposition.

16:50

It could be that the party drifts into insignificance by 2030.

16:53

My question is, what happens when there is less than 10% of the

16:59

commons as Conservative, but a ton of Tory peers in the Lords?

17:05

This question has come up after the recent rushed period of Baron David.

17:09

How should I presume is David Cameron? I don't know the answer to that one.

17:13

Adam: I think that's some, I I don't think it'll, I don't think, for two reasons.

17:16

I don't think the Tory vote will go, seat number will go that low.

17:21

I can't see anyone else coming in to be an official opposition

17:23

getting more seats than the Tories. However bad thing I do think things are gonna be very, very bad for them.

17:29

But the other thing is that Labour have already pledged that they're gonna do

17:31

some form of Lords reform, which everyone always says, and then they sort of bottle

17:34

out actually doing it in the end, right? Mm-Hmm. But I mean. In that situation, the pressure to do something about the Lords for precisely

17:40

those reasons that the listener said would be, you know, pretty, uh, you

17:44

know, un, un challengable, wouldn't it? There are lots

17:46

Helen: of complaints about the fact that the, the conservatives under this

17:49

government this term have had, that the Lords have been stroppy and have

17:53

delayed things that they wanted done. And one of the reasons I think, I can't remember who was the interview,

17:56

said this to me in previous story, governments like pre Blair, there were

17:59

so many more hereditary who were... you will not be surprised to discover largely quite Conservative,

18:04

rather than being avid socialists. So the, you know, the Government had a lot easier time than laws.

18:08

It was used to having even, you know, an even weightier stack.

18:11

So I think there would be a huge feeling, this was anti-democratic to

18:14

have a, a Lords that was opposed to the Commons and was blocking things.

18:18

However, I will say about the total collapse of the Tory party,

18:21

actually what's kind of historically unusual is that the parties

18:23

have been static for so long. You don't hear a lot about the Whigs these days, do you?

18:26

I do. And more's the pity and indeed the, the liberal.

18:29

Liberal party was one, one of the dominant parties at the turn of the 19th century

18:33

and collapsed, declined, and folded into the Liberal Democrats eventually.

18:37

What's quite interesting about the Tory party is that it has survived for so long in so many different ideological guises, right,

18:43

Adam: Most in the last three years. Helen: So, although I agree with, uh, Adam, even the worst rates

18:49

of what the polling look like don't look like essentially a

18:52

disappearance of the Tory party. It's quite unusual that they have that, you know, you've ended up

18:56

with that duopoly as it has been since the sixties now at least.

19:00

Andy: Alright. There you go Ben. Don't worry about it. It won't happen.

19:04

Ian: It's fine. No, I would worry about it. What happens if there's a very large reform presence?

19:09

and they say, well, it's, it's time.

19:12

We had, 30% of the Upper Chamber reflecting our views.

19:18

and then presumably the next stage of Lord's reform, you would have, I

19:23

dunno, Lord Lawrence Fox and Lord.

19:26

Um, who else do I Lord Dan Wooten.

19:28

These, these are the, these are the Lords that I'm looking forward to.

19:33

Uh, Lord te obviously, um, and presumably Speaker of the Lord's

19:37

Lord Farage, I mean, again, I'm, I'm putting this largely to give people

19:42

nightmares, but also as, You say, well, they'll reform it when that happens.

19:47

It sort of depends what the vote is, Helen: doesn't it? I'm gonna air my own popular opinion here, which is that if Reform are

19:52

polling that high, they deserve some representation in the Commons.

19:55

I mean, this has always been the argument against proportional representation.

19:58

Is that in the thought you saying? Well, I mean anywhere and whether that be, you know, but the fact is that the

20:03

first pass the post is very hostile to new entrants and there clearly are a lot of

20:07

people who support something to the right of the Tory party in a number of ways.

20:11

It's kind of unpleasant to think that you might get BMP style parties,

20:15

English national parties, those kind of parties represented in the Commons.

20:18

But it's kind of unpleasant to think that some people wanna vote for them.

20:20

Um, and we have got a, a system that locks out new entrants.

20:24

Mm. And the question is, when it comes to a more rightwing party than I personally

20:27

would vote for, but not an illegitimately Right wing one, you know, not a

20:30

violently right wing one should Reform...

20:32

I'm just saying... I like the idea of Lord Dan Wootton and here is my campaign

20:36

to make it happen in it's Ian: starting year. Good.

20:39

Well, the next question oddly is do journalists ever get fired?

20:44

And yes, indeed, anonymous.

20:46

They do. Andy: Um, here's quite a nice one about process.

20:50

This is from Simon Lundy. a question about courts and disclosures.

20:54

Uh, and this is actually related to what we spoke about last time.

20:56

We were speaking about, um, the various rules about what you can

20:59

and can't say in open court and what you can and can't report.

21:02

Uh, I understand the points made, read criminal cases, reporting, et

21:05

cetera, but there was a mention of super injunctions and D Notices.

21:09

But no further comment or explanation. And a D Notice is is a national security restriction on what

21:14

you can report, isn't it? Effectively, it's, it's a sort of very like top Government level.

21:18

You can't say this. Uh, my question is how does a journalist know...

21:22

that there is a super injunction or a D Notice.

21:25

If someone gives the journalist a tip to follow up, how can the

21:27

journalist ensure that they do not breach either of those things?

21:31

Which is a, a really good question that you might wanna know how, how on earth do

21:34

you know you get a story, you write it up Adam: with some difficulty, uh, from our point of view.

21:38

Certainly. Um, so we have, we have mentioned, uh, we, we did go into a bit more detail on

21:42

this in, in in, in a previous podcast, but super injunctions essentially are.

21:46

As far as we know, and, and I'm pretty, I'm pretty certain on this, a thing of

21:49

the past now since that review by the Master Of The Rolls in 2011, after there

21:52

were a whole, there were loads and loads of them and the, and the whole, it was

21:55

decided that by Master Of The Rolls, top of the legal, legal system reviewed

21:59

it said this is an untenable situation. I mean, Super Injunctions are different to normal injunctions, which are a,

22:04

a, a fairly standard part of law. Uh, injunctions saying there are elements of this that has been

22:09

decided in court, cannot be reported. Super injunctions, you're not allowed to say that the injunction exists,

22:15

which was just extraordinary and, and, and, and leads into exactly.

22:18

Um, what, what, what the listener's asking about that.

22:21

If you dunno that something exists, how do you know not to breach it?

22:24

Um, and I had to do at that time to 20 10, 20 11, an awful lot of

22:28

research and phoning round contacts on newspapers and, uh, lawyers and saying,

22:32

right, what ones do you know about? Can we, can we compare notes on this?

22:36

And we, we've got a file. I think we've still got it next door of all, all of them.

22:39

And, and as many as we could identify at that point.

22:41

Partly just for research purposes and wanting to know how many of them

22:44

there were, because we wanted to write 'em about 'em as a, as a kind

22:46

of a concept, but also for those very reasons that you don't wanna end up

22:50

breaching them, uh, without realizing it. Okay.

22:53

What about D notices? So, D notices don't exist anymore.

22:56

I thought they'd been replaced by DA notices. I now find out this morning, they now something called DSMA notices, uh,

23:02

which are, they're issued by the Defense and Security Media Advisory Committee.

23:06

Uh, now these are not desperately secretive because you can find out all

23:09

about them by going to DS ma.uk, uh, where you will discover that there are

23:14

essentially, um, a load of standing, uh, DSMA notices, which are just aimed.

23:18

Uh, they're, they're, they're aimed at, um, essentially not giving away

23:22

anything that will be useful to terrorists or enemies of the state.

23:25

So it's basically, if you have found, um, that there is, um, some terrible

23:30

vulnerability in our nuclear power stations, uh, not publishing exactly

23:34

how to blow them up, that sort of thing. And, and, and that there are five standing, uh, DSMA notices, which

23:40

cover all this amount for your military operations plans and capabilities.

23:42

So that's basically saying. Not printing a piece saying, we're gonna attack the Houthis

23:46

tomorrow from this place. And that's where, that's where they'll be launching the drones.

23:51

Uh, nuclear and non-Nuclear weapons systems and equipment, military

23:54

counterterrorist forces, special forces and Intelligence agency operations,

23:58

physical property and assets. So that's, you know, the nuclear conversations and things I was talking

24:01

about and personnel and their families who work in sensitive positions.

24:04

So that's basically not going. Hey, see that guy in Tehran?

24:07

He's actually a spy, and his kids go to this school.

24:10

So, I mean, there, there, there's stuff that, that, that you, pretty obvious

24:13

there is a fairly obvious reason for, for, you know, it's actually

24:15

putting people in danger, including potentially yourself in this situation.

24:19

Helen: that did come up this week when the KI biography came out because, um,

24:23

his chief of staff, Sue Gray, spent some of the Eighties running a pub, uh, on

24:28

along the Irish border, which people said that's a very strange thing to do.

24:32

Some might say the kind of thing that a spy would do.

24:34

And Sue Gray gave an on the record denial for the first

24:37

time saying, no, I wasn't a spy. And then someone pointed out that under British law, if you are a spy, you are

24:42

obliged to go 'no, I wasn't a spy.' So it doesn't really get us any further along

24:46

knowing whether or not that was true. But that's not exactly a D Notice is it, Adam, that's just a sort of standing

24:51

MI6 rule that you don't outs spies

24:53

Adam: or that would be the Official Secrets Act, wouldn't it? Ah, okay. I would

24:55

Ian: guess. Um, I mean, I'm glad to hear that, um, it's been automated now.

25:00

'cause in the old days. The D Notice committee was rather more informal.

25:03

It was more, more gentlemanly. And I, I had personal experience with this 'cause.

25:07

I dunno if you remember, during one of the Iraq wars, there were some

25:11

plans for an operation called Desert Storm, which were in the back...

25:14

I think it was a Volvo, which was nicked. and, uh, nobody knew where these plans were.

25:20

I had a very irate call, uh, from the Head of the D Notice committee

25:24

who was an admiral at the time, saying, is that Ian Hislop?

25:26

And I said, 'uh, yes it is.' And he said, 'uh, you know, these plans for Desert

25:31

Storm?' And I said, 'yeah.' He said, 'you don't know where they are, old boy?'

25:38

You know, which is, uh, Britain working in a slightly different way.

25:41

Yeah. Just the Helen: chaps phoning up to say, yeah. Got any military pla secret military

25:45

Ian: plans? Yes, I'd say, yeah, I've got them in the back of the office.

25:47

Adam, Andy: they're stored in the company Volvo.

25:51

Yeah. Adam: Um, it has been slightly more formalized now.

25:53

I should just, just to finish off the details of it, um, what happens

25:56

if there's an additional DSMA notice on a specific story, which

25:59

does happen very occasionally? Uh, is that, um, it will be.

26:02

Issued by email to all editors. I guess this includes you Ian, and through the Press Association and

26:07

the Society of Editors' networks.

26:09

That sounds slightly sinister, doesn't it? Andy: Can I check how far does it go?

26:13

As in if I'm working on. Railways Today or whatever, you know, is it just national papers?

26:18

Is it local papers? Or, or, or

26:20

Adam: hobbyists? It says here, all editors. How many of you ever do you remember receiving

26:24

Ian: Ian? very few, largely 'cause people don't consider Private Eye proper publication

26:29

or indeed myself as a proper editor. And, and once I was very, very grateful during a, a, a lengthy case against

26:35

the Maxwell Brothers, which, uh, uh, it was very useful, um, for us

26:40

that this system isn't infallible. The late Robert Maxwell, he died at the time, his sons were being tried

26:45

for a possible corruption and various other offenses and Private Eye ran an

26:50

interview with the late Robert Maxwell -from Hell- uh, uh, which the judge deemed

26:56

to be prejudicial to the current case.

27:00

But fortunately he went through the records and I didn't get the email.

27:06

Andy: So the next question is it, it is, it's sort, it's sort of semi-related.

27:11

It's, it is. Why aren't you writing about this? And I promise we, there aren't many of these, you know, but

27:14

it's, no, no, it was quite right. And, uh, I'll pick the one from Edward who writes.

27:18

My question is about Charlotte Owen, who we did write about in

27:21

the last issue of the magazine and maybe the one before that.

27:23

Yeah. Who is she and how come she's in the House of Lords?

27:25

And if you're not allowed to answer that, why? And if you're not even allowed to talk about her, why?

27:29

Uh, I, I'd love more answers because her appointment is infuriating on the face of it.

27:33

May have logical reasons. It'd be quite Helen: funny if we just had like a single shot run out and then this podcast ended.

27:38

That would start a few conspiracy theories, wouldn't it? Andy: So this is Sean Boulogne, who was an aide in Downing Street.

27:43

Uh, seemed to be relatively junior, was then elevated as part of Boris's.

27:47

I think this his leaving honours, wasn't it? To the Adam: house along with Ross Kempsel, who's a similar age to her and

27:51

no one is quite as cross about. No. Andy: Ross Kempsel who...

27:54

Ian: Is he blonde? Adam: Uh, he's not, no, he's got

27:56

Ian: no, you've got no news judgment at all, have you? Adam: I'm so sorry.

28:00

I'm coming at it from another angle from you. Andy: I mean, my, my main thing is that his name begins with Ross Kemp.

28:06

Yes. And no one seems to talk about that nearly enough for me.

28:09

Helen: I always think Adam's gonna talk about Ross Kemp.

28:11

I, Kemps made, Adam: appear. I can talk about Ross Kemp if you want me to.

28:14

Andy: The Hard Man of the Lords. No. Um, so lots of people, and again, this is a very big thing online as well.

28:19

Lots of people have lots of sinister theories about Charlotte Ho and being in

28:21

the House of Lords and why she's there. , Helen: basically people wanted to say that she's either Boris Johnson's daughter or

28:26

his lover, and there's no evidence that anybody can find for either of them.

28:29

Adam: No. I can tell you there are a lot of journalists on a lot of publications

28:32

who've been looking for nefarious reasons behind it, and I think my

28:35

conclusion on it is that essentially Boris did his, uh, resignations list

28:39

by looking around the office and going, oh, you, you could be on it.

28:42

And if you happen to wander through the room at that. That's sort of quite within character for, yeah, for Boris, you know, as,

28:47

as much as elevating lovers and, and, and love children to the Lord, I

28:51

Ian: believe that entirely. But didn't this, this, um, girl's mother actually issue a statement

28:56

saying, no, look, and she's my child.

28:58

Thank you very much, everybody online.

29:01

Uh, can you not put this on anymore? Well, it was one of

29:03

Adam: those classic online conspiracy theories that relied on them leaving

29:06

a be really big clue in that, which is called Charlotte Owen.

29:08

And Boris's first wife is called Allegra Mosin Owen.

29:12

That, if you think about that Ian: for a

29:15

Adam: second. Yeah. It just, it, it, it doesn't stand up what it, but if you're trying

29:20

to hide your love child, you Helen: give her a different Well, it was, well, it was definitely

29:23

her mother was someone else. And it's not like if you have a secret love child, you go, are you

29:26

gonna name this love child after be.

29:29

First wife of the guy I had it with. That's very odd.

29:32

Love child behavior. But yeah, I Ian: mean the, the answer to this question, why haven't you run this story

29:37

is, is quite likely to be because it isn't true that that's always a slight problem.

29:42

And the other one, my other answer is, uh, 'cause we don't

29:45

know about it, can you tell me? Mm-Hmm. Yeah.

29:48

And if the answer can you tell me is I read it.

29:52

On some blog somewhere, , that I can't remember where, and the

29:56

detail's gone, that isn't very useful.

29:58

So to be honest, the answer to the Charlotte Owen story is nobody knows why.

30:04

Boris a point. So maybe he doesn't know. Um, we literally, we were at that point of the cycle, um, It's not

30:10

because there's a super injunction. Again, the other thing a lot of people write in and say is, Hmm, you see I've got

30:16

this story about my accountant, and I'm guessing he's got a super injunction out.

30:20

And you say, you've guessed wrongly he hasn't.

30:24

and, give us the detail. Don't assume that it's cowardice or a legal problem.

30:30

You know, the, the rare occasions when you know there is an order

30:34

or we can't say anything like. we've twice had to put in, there was going to be a piece about, uh, Lucy let be.

30:39

There isn't. There is a very, very, um, authoritarian order restraining what we can say.

30:45

We've challenged it once, it's been slightly ameliorated, but it

30:49

still makes it very to report about it, you know, and this is because

30:52

there's another trial coming up and there's nothing we can do about that.

30:55

That's not cowardice. That's not, Ooh, I'm terribly scared.

30:59

It's, we don't want to mess the trial up.

31:01

Adam: And that piece will appear at the conclusion of the trial, I would

31:04

imagine if form of it, won't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's funny, it's probably

31:07

Andy: part of, partly, you know, it sort of relates to Private Eye writers

31:09

not having bylines, this kind of thing. There is a, there is a slightly different feel of pieces in Private

31:14

Eye, which I think does encourage people to think, ah, well, that we're

31:16

probably sitting on a big cache of stories that we haven't published yet.

31:19

But, uh, we were, and the truth is. That's not true at all.

31:23

Adam: No. If you stand the story up, it, it goes in, can the story up and get it past Ian?

31:28

Yes. Helen: But it is kind of a wonderful reflection about the fact we do

31:32

expect everything to be explicable. Now I often think not, this is my, one of my weird delusions, but I often

31:37

think about what life must have been like as a medieval peasant, right?

31:39

When you had no idea what was coming around the corner and your crops might fail.

31:42

We do assume that everything is totally Ian: explicable answer.

31:44

As a matter of a per. It was God. It was, yeah. Mm-Hmm. Or you failing God.

31:48

Yeah. Right. Helen: And that was probably, you just live with that level of simple time,

31:51

Adam: Helen. So now you need to return. So now it's just Boris moving in mysterious ways, isn't it?

31:55

Andy: Helen? You have spent too much time at these Conservative conferences that you are they

31:59

Helen: I long for the simple agrarian society where men were men and

32:03

wheat fields were wheat fields! Andy: Don't worry if the Popcons get the way.

32:06

We will all be tilling the crops before long.

32:08

Um, okay, here's a, here's a really nice one.

32:10

This is from Stephen d Quirk. Thank you Steven.

32:14

this, well, there are two questions. The first one is, as a bit of a procedure nerd, I'd love to hear a bit about the,

32:18

how it's put together, which items go in first, which are left to last, and

32:21

then just how close to the Wednesday. Do we actually send it off?

32:26

Uh, and then secondly, in the 12 years or so of reading the mag, I

32:29

can't help notice just how many big governmental announcements occur on

32:32

the Monday just before the new issue. Mm-Hmm. Is this a healthy sign that I'm paying attention to the

32:36

world or are tinfoil hats? I'm thinking Lawrence Fox has some good points in my future.

32:44

Ian: Good letter. Um, I agree about the Monday deadline though.

32:47

it's not a Wednesday. We get a press Monday night, and, uh, the bulk of people get it the Wednesday,

32:52

but some people get it on the Tuesday. Um, depending where you are and, and, and how the Royal Mail's

32:57

doing, um, at this particular time.

33:00

But, uh, no, I mean, I, I, I think you could assume that people do know when

33:05

we go to press and certain people don't answer questions that we need very badly

33:09

until we've just gone to press and, uh, people play games with us on that.

33:14

So I think, I think it's fair to assume that happens.

33:17

the other thing is, uh, what order do things go in?

33:20

I can't really reveal that 'cause it might give away, editorial

33:24

incompetence and lack of time tabling.

33:29

So I'm afraid that that is under a D Notice.

33:32

Hey, Adam: nice try Steven. The, Helen: um, the one thing that I, uh, did, I read Adam's very good history of

33:37

Private Eye before coming to work here. 'cause I good remainder bookshops folks.

33:40

Yeah. Like the big swot I am. And I was surprised that until the pandemic happened, you were

33:44

essentially sticking things together with bits of Pritt stick.

33:47

I'm Andy: still a bit unhappy that that's changed. I mean, I, I used to love the pritt stick.

33:50

You, Adam: Ian wasn't using the pritt stick. We had, he had a man who used the pritt stick for him.

33:54

He just pointed at where the pritt stick should Helen: go. Like Richard Desmond and his banana of some butler would carry in a pritt.

33:59

Stick on a silver tray on the Monday Adam: morning. Well, you see, you think you're joking, but I can remember, you know, arranging

34:04

little bits of paper like confetti, the individual stories and cartoons

34:07

on sheets of cardboard, which then had to be carried across the room.

34:11

'cause the pages, even at that point were actually done on these things called

34:14

computers, which we had by that point, but just been carried so carefully.

34:17

And if anyone opened a door or there was a draft or anything that that could be it.

34:20

That was an entire page just gone and had to be done again, wasn't it?

34:24

Yes. The Helen: Chiefs have said to me this morning that you were in terror

34:26

of sneezing on a Monday morning. Yeah. It was a whole

34:29

Adam: page. Completely ring true. Sometimes there would be a moment on press day where you would

34:32

say, where's that story gone? And everyone would sort of get down on their hands and knees

34:36

like a contact lens you've got, Helen: yeah. On which year was this, please?

34:40

This was up to, it Adam: began with 2

34:42

Ian: 0 1. This was in 19, I tell you, a lot of people, did it get fired?

34:50

Adam: See it worked as a system. Yeah. You could see the whole magazine laid out literally on, on, on, on, on a big

34:55

table downstairs and, and, and get a real idea of what the pages were gonna like.

34:58

It was essentially an Andy: agr, a medieval

35:00

Adam: Peas essentially that understood how Yeah.

35:03

And, and then we paid a 10th to the profits to the Pope and we knew we

35:05

were gonna looked after afterwards. It was fine.

35:08

Andy: Okay. I think we've cleared that one up. Thank you, Stephen. Um, Jenny Lanter writes, uh, she's written them with loads of questions,

35:13

actually, so I'm just gonna pick, uh, one or two of the most fun. Uh, if times New Roman was removed from your font library tomorrow,

35:19

what would you choose to see the magazine published in Georgia?

35:22

I. I think comic Adam: sounds, comic sounds all the way.

35:25

Yeah. Helen: You know, the Guardian commissioned its own font called Guardian

35:30

Egyptian when it did the redesign.

35:32

It's quite a thing to have a bespoke font of your own.

35:34

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. And do you have to get that into.

35:38

Your computers, as in, do you have to, how do you, he

35:40

Helen: said in 90 years old, how do you get the font into the machine?

35:43

Do you, Andy: do you send it to Microsoft?

35:45

Do you send the drawings of the letters Adam: really small in those holes?

35:49

I'm sorry, I trying to understand Andy: this, but I, I think I'm speaking for all our listeners

35:51

when I say I do not understand, I'm Helen: sure it's fine.

35:54

There are things called font sets that you load and to that are programs

35:57

that you run on your, whatever your desktop processing software is, and

35:59

you can, uh, yeah, you can update it. Adam: We do have a proprietary type set.

36:03

Uh, the, the Private Eye logo. Is a specially designed, um, font that was done just for us

36:07

by, and again, I'm consult the excellent history of Private Eye.

36:10

I wrote quite a while ago, I cannot remember his name, but a

36:13

very famous graphic designer in the 1960s, who did that for us?

36:16

There's, there is a full alphabet of it. So we could, we could rename ourselves at any point and still have that...

36:20

well, we do occasionally do different logos and things.

36:22

We've been Private Spy Ian: and I'm very keen on this idea of, uh, uh, of the, why

36:27

is it called Guardian Egyptian? Was there a big head office that lost a lot of money in Egypt?

36:32

I mean, at what point in the Guardian's? Yeah, it was a cycle.

36:34

Was this, it was a pyramid scheme, unfortunately. We're there.

36:38

There we Helen: go. I mean, yeah, I mean I did genuinely, I don't know.

36:41

I did wonder if it was a, 'cause Langen notoriously didn't

36:44

say anything in conference. He was literally at the spinx.

36:46

So maybe someone was making it a kind of a sign to him was a pirate lift joke.

36:50

Andy: No, I think there is a font called Egyptian, so it might have

36:52

been an an iteration of that. Ah, Ian: right. Tweet spec.

36:55

I would want something actually specific to us.

36:58

Andy: Well, let's, let's do that. I've got some potato printing kits at home and we can,

37:02

Ian: um, yeah. Make it happen. Yeah. Times New nomen.

37:06

There we go. Adam: There it is. Andy: She also asks, um, do you see space in the British media environment

37:12

for a spiritual rival to the Eye? No.

37:14

I, spiritual, I gotta say I don't see any space for any rivals of any kind.

37:17

I think it's dangerous Helen: to even ask. I think that's actually a Evgeny Lebvedev's podcast is a

37:21

spiritual rival to all news media.

37:24

I think Adam: actually, you know, our old rival Punch that's got that, that

37:27

title is still going begging, isn't it? And it's, it's moved.

37:30

It was last owned by Muhammad Al Fad, who ran a very unsuccessful

37:33

rival to us for a while, Ian: and his son.

37:35

Who, um, actually offered me the title

37:39

Adam: so he could have been Private Eye incorporating Punch.

37:41

Ian: Yes. Quite recently. Really, really charming.

37:44

Um, young man. and I thought, blimey.

37:47

I wasn't very kind to your father when he was alive, so this is very good of you...

37:51

to ring me up. And he said, do you wanna buy it? And um, I said, no.

37:57

Adam: Why? Ian: price was too high. I can't go into, it was, I mean, for me to consider buying it, it

38:04

would had to have been under a quid. You're right.

38:06

Adam: Okay. Andy: okay.

38:09

One last, procedural one in your last podcast.

38:12

Kevin Doyle writes, you were talking about the need for journalists to

38:14

report on court cases to make the public aware of the crooks in their midst.

38:17

To that end, why doesn't private eye have any online archive of its reporting of the

38:21

many rogues it has exposed over the years? Is it money, time, legal restrictions, or a worry that people won't buy the

38:26

magazine that stops this happening? Ian: I suppose the general principle is we need to charge for journalism,

38:31

um, even if it's journalism in the past in order to fund current journalism.

38:35

But I think Adam, some of the specials are up, aren't they?

38:37

Adam: A lot of the special reports we've done from sort of locker B

38:39

to foot and mouth right through to. My one about the phone hacking trial and a lot of Richard's

38:44

more recent stuff on T side. Those are, those are all available from the website as, as, as

38:47

PDFs and gonna be downloaded. Uh, I mean, it would be enormous thing to put 60 whatever years

38:52

we were out of, uh, back issues digitized and, and, and all up there.

38:56

And I, I mean, there would be some legal problems with it as

38:58

well because not so much recently, but some of those early days we.

39:01

Did have to print apologies for stories and, and, and, and retractions and things.

39:04

So there would be a, you would actually have to go, because

39:07

legally it counts as republishing if you, if you put stuff out online.

39:10

So that would be some issues with that.

39:12

Ian: I think it's a very good question is, is we were slightly beaning

39:15

the fact that you don't get local newspapers doing court reporting.

39:18

I mean, the Telegraph used to do it. I mean, sort of exhaustively that sort of page three four is just, you would

39:24

get the case and not just the first day where you got the prosecution's

39:27

case, you'd, you'd get all of it. And that was a huge bo to everyone in terms of, oh look, someone is being tried.

39:35

Look, that is going on. And now as I think that he's trying to say, that doesn't

39:40

happen and I, we can't do that. We can't do local court reporting.

39:44

Helen: You know, the fact that the eye doesn't put things on the internet is the

39:46

origin story of me coming to work here. Oh, really?

39:48

Yeah. In some ways. I think the first time in I ever spoke to you was you.

39:51

I had done a, a New Statesman story about.

39:55

Uh, hot women being employed at sort of as booth babes at video game

39:58

conventions in which I had chosen to illustrate with some of these women.

40:01

And, uh, the eye probably, Adam actually wrote a story about how

40:04

intensely hypocritical this was. I think that was one of Andy's,

40:06

Adam: sorry. And

40:09

Helen: anyway, I get this Adam: call. I was Ian: on holiday. Helen: I get this call put through, and it's someone, and then the

40:14

woman's voice says that Ian, his lap is on the phone for you.

40:16

And obviously I think, oh, what the. Fuck have I done?

40:19

It's all over. I see my journalistic career come crashing down and it was Ian phoning

40:22

me to say, would you mind, I know we've been very rude about you, but

40:25

would you mind taking the story down? Because I tweeted about it being like, I'm in Private Eye.

40:29

And he was like, we'd like to sell some copies of the magazine.

40:32

Uh, and I found this very funny.

40:34

He had to phone me saying, I've been very rude about you.

40:37

Would you mind in not publicizing this? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

40:39

To people so I can monetize Adam: it as in you put up, Ian: because you put up the whole story.

40:44

It's a button hell of a job I got here. People, people just don't realize.

40:49

Andy: 90% of your day is ringing people on Twitter who've, who've put up a cartoon.

40:53

Yeah. Here's just a little bonus ball one from Ian Kippen.

40:57

dear, sir, or Madam. I like that.

40:59

Ian: That's me. Thank you. Andy: Well, whilst I follow your regular depths into the lives of

41:03

the Sussex, I would like to hear your take on why a particular genre

41:06

of journalists such as Moron and Toni, can't leave the Dutches alone.

41:11

I think the answer to that's pretty simple is that it just gets clicks.

41:14

Yeah, clicks. It's as simple as that. I, I met someone recently from a paper, which has been very, very over egging.

41:20

Its, its Sussex coverage and, and he said, yeah, it's just

41:23

staggering how many clicks it gets. I did

41:26

Helen: like the, um, the thing that was in our magazine, print magazine, the last

41:29

issue this pointing out that Harry didn't believe the briefings from the, the press.

41:33

You know, he feels that the, uh, obviously part, a big part of Spare is the fact

41:36

he feels that the rest of the palace briefs very aggressively and against him.

41:39

But he didn't believe the briefings about how ill Charles was and

41:41

came over to see from himself. I thought it was a really good, weird little insight that, uh,

41:45

that came across in the last print magazine, but you are right.

41:48

One of the questions is that they do clicks and also everybody involved

41:50

does also can't stop themselves. Briefing to the press, even the Sussex get people who know them.

41:56

We know from the court case to brief the press.

41:58

So it is, you know, some of the messiness of the drama is because

42:01

everyone involved wants to get their version of the, the story on it.

42:04

So it's Ian: easy, I mean, because you don't have to try very hard to, to get sources or

42:09

information, and B, the general public is very keen on this and the number of.

42:14

Conversations you have with people who you really thought didn't care massively about

42:20

the rebranding of the Sussex website.

42:22

People who've, who've really got lives and friends and hinterlands who are saying,

42:27

well, it's pretty shocking, isn't it? And I know I'm meant to be shocked and I'm thinking, oh yeah.

42:32

Is it? Yes, yes it is.

42:35

I'm very taken at the moment. This is my current obsession.

42:37

And Res can tell me which bit. It seems to be an exact parallel for the prodigal son.

42:43

And we're in, we're in act one. he's off, um, being the swine herd.

42:47

Yes. And he's off, which is, you know,

42:49

Andy: They keep livestock in California. That's it. They do, he's doing the, he's doing the, the

42:52

Ian: work to, they're chicken, they're not pigs, but he is,

42:55

he is literally out there.

42:57

If he returns act two. The other brother, if you remember, very upset.

43:02

Oh yeah. I've been toiling in the fields all day while he's just, just turned up day.

43:06

I'd be perfectly good as number one son, right?

43:09

Father welcomes him with open arms.

43:11

Now as I remember it, the Bible's fairly quiet on the mother who

43:16

doesn't get to look in, but if anyone wants to help me out on the

43:19

rest of this story, uh, please do. Who's the

43:21

Andy: fatted calf who gets killed? Andrew, Adam: that's it.

43:26

We are Andy: there. That's it for this episode of page 94.

43:28

Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get a copy of the magazine, we recommend you do.

43:33

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43:37

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43:39

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43:44

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43:46

It's honestly the price of everything else. Very expensive, Private Eye, very cheap.

43:49

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43:52

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43:55

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43:57

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44:01

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44:06

We love hearing from you. They all get read. Alright, that's it.

44:09

See you next time.