There's no place like Gnome
Behind the reception at Private Eye's offices is a collage of faded newspaper cuttings and black-and-white photographs of those most closely associated with the magazine during its 45-year existence. 'I call it the Wall of Death,' says Ian Hislop. 'They're all there - Willie Rushton, Peter Cook, Paul Foot, John Wells - to remind you that, though they may have passed away, they're still hanging around to make sure you get it right.'
Hislop has shouldered the responsibility of getting it right now for 20 years, which must make him one of the longest serving editors in the British press. He joined the magazine straight after graduating from Oxford with an English degree, and his appointment by Richard Ingrams, who had served fictional propeietor Lord Gnome for nearly 25 years, was greeted with surprise and, in some circles, contempt, coming as it did only five years later. Long-time contributors Peter McKay and Nigel Dempster convened a lunch to persuade real proprietor Peter Cook to overturn the decision. The plot backfired when a tired and emotional Cook staggered round to the office not to bury Hislop but to praise him. 'I knew the lunch was taking place but, given that I'd partly got my job through Peter, the idea that they could ply him with booze and he'd say to me "You're not editor any more" seemed absurd.'
Thoughts of stepping down have not crossed his mind in the two decades since. 'When I was appointed, I gave a number of pompous interviews saying that this was a job you should do only for five years. But the idea of moving on has never registered.' Not even when, two years into his tenure, a court awarded the wife of the Yorkshire Ripper £600,000 in libel damages for a story published under Ingrams's watch?
'The court cases can be grim. You think: This is pointless, we're going to lose and I will have sunk the magazine. Ironically, it was the Stuart Condliffe trial in 2001 [a Cornish accountant sued over claims that he had been over-charging clients] that ground me down most. I can remember thinking "we're not going to win this even though we're absolutely right".' The Eye did win but it was a Pyrrhic victory - Condliffe declared himself bankrupt, leaving the magazine with costs of nearly a million pounds.
Condliffe had no doubt gambled on the magazine being scuppered by its reputation for scurrilous gossip. It is a perception that annoys Hislop. 'I don't want people to read the mag and think, "Oh, they've just made that up." That's one of the reasons I got rid of Dempster and McKay.' He cites campaigns against the Private Finance Initiative, the early reports of the Bristol heart scandal and any number of investigations by the late Paul Foot as evidence of a shift away from gossip to fact-based reporting.
He doesn't, however, include its controversial defence of Dr Andrew Wakefield, whose research first suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. A year ago, Observer columnist Nick Cohen wrote that parents who had been frightened into paying for a single measles jab after the media hysteria should send the bill to Hislop and 'demand prompt payment or a free lunch'.
'I do think we acted responsibly,' he says. 'It wouldn't, for example, give me any pleasure if there was a link with autism and bowel disease. What has declined in the media in the past 20 years is an appetite among newspaper proprietors to pay for good reporting. When I see freesheets consisting of little more than wire copy and TV listings, or read about people who can actually write being laid off so that podcasts can be produced, I do get depressed.'
For all this worthy talk, the perception of the 46-year-old Hislop, mainly thanks to his appearances on Have I Got News For You, is as a persecutor of hypocrites and egomaniacs. Former Mirror editor Piers Morgan was one of his targets. 'I got fed up so I decided to get back at him,' Morgan says. 'We said we'd pay £50 to anyone who could dish the dirt on him. We didn't get much - someone thought they had seen him going into the chronic piles institute in Tooting but we couldn't substantiate it. What I couldn't believe was the number of journalists who thought I was out of order. Of course, barely a day goes by now when I'm not racked with guilt about how I treated this Mother Teresa of journalism.'
Christopher Silvester, the Independent on Sunday's diarist, who joined Private Eye not long after Hislop, is certain he will carry on longer than his predecessor: 'Ian feels a lot less burdened in the role than Richard. He's made a lot of money through television, and the libel situation is now under control. He's a conservative, which means he's very good at adapting the magazine to changing times while staying true to its origins.
'The problem will be, as it is for Tony Blair, the legacy issue - who does he hand over to? It was clear almost from the day he walked in that Ian was being groomed by Richard. I don't think there's anyone in the next generation at the moment who could step into his shoes.'
Around the same time as Hislop was taking over from Ingrams, Jeffrey Archer was resigning as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party after allegations that he had slept with a prostitute. I ask if Hislop ever grows nostalgic for the days when villains like Archer or Robert Maxwell were part of public life. 'No, not really. There are always new ones. Jeffrey was great because he was such an embarrassment to the Tories. But this lot are worse in terms of sleaze. People remember all the sex from the fag end of the Major government, but the financial scandals have been worse under Labour.'
'What I find funny about the Conservatives is how wound-up Cameron leaves the old Tories, like [Simon] Heffer and Norman Tebbit. Clearly he loves it that they get wound up. There's a feeling that life under a Brown government could be quite boring so it might be nice to have something different.'
When Hislop became editor he admitted he had voted for the SDP/Liberal Alliance in 1983. 'I've voted for them all at some point,' he says, 'though only once for Labour.' My guess would be in 1997. 'But I make a point of voting. I'm with George Orwell: it's as important to vote for politicians as it is to laugh at them.'
This is the archive of The Observer up until 21/04/2025. The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media.