Happy Birthday Private Eye

London calling.

London Walks connecting.

This… is London.

This is London Walks.

Streets ahead.

Story time. History time.

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And a very good morning to you, one and all. Wherever you are. It’s Friday, October 25th, 2024.

And so we come to a fork in the road. The game plan was to have Friday be the day for the rollout of the headline act of the week’s London Calling podcasts. And I’ve got a headline act. Another interview with a London Walks guide.

But, as Supermac – Harold Macmillan, the Tory prime minister some 65 years ago – once said, “events, dear boy, events.”

And as it happens, we’ve got an event which, in my books, trumps what I had planned for today. Yes, we’re going off-piste.

Turns out there’s a wonderful anniversary sparkling like a big Colour Change Sapphire in the October 25th jewel box. For the record, the October 25th jewel box is gem-packed, so to speak. Pablo Picasso was born on October 25th, 1881. The first great English poet Geoffrey Chaucer died on October 25th, 1400. Also shuffling off the mortal coil on October 25th was King George II. His Majesty’s hourglass ran out in 1760.  Silken-voiced, debonair, menacing actor Vincent Price crossed over on October 25, 1993. Vincent Price in the bow and Charon, the ferryman of the dead, in the stern, the two of them eyeing one another – that must have been some boat ride. Oh and hard-drinking Irish actor Richard Harris took that same voyage on October 25th, 2002. That would have been a memorable crossing for Charon. Richard Harris bellowing at him, “Let’s raise a toast to the coast.” And then unsteadily standing up in Charon’s boat and peeing in the river Styx and then for good measure in the boat itself.

And one more winning entry, October 25th, 1854 was the charge of the Light Brigade.

A pretty good hand for any day in the calendar year to be dealt.

But I’m going to play the joker in the pack. Or an even better way of putting that, on October 25th, 1961, the lid sprung open and up popped the jack in the box of British journalism. Private Eye. The great fortnightly satirical rag. Yes, Private Eye is 63-years-old today. And just as spry and spruce and rude and irreverent and fearless and mocking and committed to taking no prisoners as it’s always been. The Eye – famous for lampooning public figures and in-depth investigative journalism into under-reported scandals and cover-ups – punches way above its weight in every respect. Not least its distinctive front page. As front pages go it’s either a fool’s cap, or the dorsal fin of a shark slicing toward you from the waters of the news agent’s magazine shelves.

Everybody has a favourite Private Eye cover. I actually have two. One is from some twenty years ago. It shows those two fools Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Dubya Bush fitted up with speech bubbles saying, “All we are saying is give war a chance.” Needless to say, that issue came out when Bush and Blair we’re doing their utmost to get their war of choice birthed. And get maybe a million people – most of them innocent – deathed.

My other favourite cover was some years ago. When it was disclosed that the Dirty Digger – as Private Eye always calls the man who owns the news – i.e., the Australian-turned-American media magnate – Rupert Murdoch. Anyway, when it was disclosed that Murdoch had cancer Private Eye plastered the ugliest picture of him they could find all over their front cover and affixed to it the title, Cancer Has Murdoch. Yes, bears repeating, the Eye doesn’t take prisoners. They can be merciless. Indeed, cruel. That said, the publication is a national treasure. This country’s a better place for having it. And if you’re a visitor, you should buy a copy and make of it what you will. A lot of it will be fairly opaque to you if you’re a visitor. But you’ll certainly get the idea. And you’ll be rewarded with some good laughs. Especially sections like Pseud’s Corner, Funny Old World, Commentator Balls, Street of Shame, Lookalike, and Readers’ Letters. It’s £2.99 pence well spent. It’ll get you behind the scenes, get you inside this fascinating, complicated country, society and culture in ways that no other publication can.

But speaking of publications, I wanted to find out what was going on, what the world was like when Private Eye burst onto the scene.

So I looked at the Times and the Telegraph and the Illustrated London News for October 25th, 1961.

So here you go, let us go, you and I, while 1961 is spread out against the sky, like a patient aetherised upon a table. A cryogenic patient. Yes, let’s do some time travelling.

The Jack in the Box called Private Eye will have sprung up to see that the Cold War was in full swing. The Berlin Wall was nearing completion. Lord Russell – that’s Bertrand Russell, the famous philosopher – had, the day before, led a ban the bomb delegation to the Soviet Embassy. A new oral polio vaccine was being rolled out. So no more jabs. Shots in American parlance. Speaking of shots, the Home Office Research Unit has just published a report titled Murder. We learn from the Report that the most common method of murder in this country was an attack by a blunt instrument or by hitting or kicking. Shooting was the least common method and so far as it was used at all it was used mainly by suicides and the mentally abnormal. And surprise surprise, men killing women was far more common than the other way round. What else? Well, the Assistant Keeper of the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge university announced that a 2000-year-old sculpted head previously thought to be of the Athenian politician Themistocoles is probably the head of Julius Caesar. The only genuine likeness of him in this country, apart from those on coins.

What else? Well, we learn the Denazification of Number Plates – car license plates – is underway in West Germany. Car number plates that begin with SS (the blackshirts), SA (the abbreviation for the brownshirts), HJ (Hitler Youth) are now verboten. And there are serious concerns in this country about the fallout from Soviet atomic bomb tests. The radiation and what it was doing to our milk supplies.

And I liked a Letter to the Editor that began, “Sir, May I make a despairing plea for a return on the part of those prominent in public life to the use of pure, simple English? Ever since some warped genius invented the term ‘juvenile delinquent,’ meaning bad boy (or girl), civil servants, Parliamentary draftsmen, journalists and others have fallen over one another in a sinister competition to invent longer and worse euphemisms.’ The correspondent, one Robert Bower from London SW 15 – that’ll be Putney or thereabouts – concludes ‘elder statesmen, ministers of the Crown and others high in the counsels of the nation – many of them honours graduates of our great universities – use such terms as ‘increased productivity’, ‘redundancy’ and ‘restrictive practices.’ Why not say ‘harder work’, ‘no work’ and ‘organised slacking’.

And for your viewing pleasure, we learn that the night before – when the presses were rolling out the first edition of Private Eye – the BBC aired a programme called The Death Penalty, in which hangman Albert Pierrpoint gave a detailed description of what happens when a man is executed. No ‘organised slacking’ when the trap door is sprung. A horrid but precise reversal of the Eye’s Jack in the Box manoeuvre. Heading for the box rather than taking leave of it. Leave me aghast but I’m sure any number of Vincent Price’s characters would have looked on approvingly.

Ok, two more and then let’s call it a day, rappel back from our little climb up to the top of October 25, 1961 to see what we can see.

In a written parliamentary answer tabled the day before, the Home Secretary reported that the number of immigrants from the West Indies, India, and Pakistan is believed to be more than 400,000. They were fretting then, they’re fretting today.

And finally, this gem from the Illustrated London News.

Then as now London was an Exhibition Centre. The RHS Old Hall in Westminster – that’ll be the Royal Horticultural Society Old Hall – had just hosted the first ever National Security Exhibition. The star attraction of which was a thief-catching wages bag. Absolutely ingenious. Should a thief try to snatch the bag his hand is trapped by a device in the handle. And for good measure, three six foot long steel rods shoot out of the bag, preventing the thief from getting away by car. Meanwhile, inside the bag, a police whistle sounds the alarm.

And to accompany the thief-proof wages bag, a fibre-glass bowler hat for the wages clerk. Protects his noggin should a thief sneak up behind him and give him a sharp rap across the head with a club.

There you go, that’s the world Private Eye came into 63 years ago today. What I wouldn’t give for a fibre glass bowler hat to add to my collection. Happy birthday Private Eye.

You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –

home of London Walks,

London’s signature

walking tour company.

London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size

walking tour company.

And as long as we’re at it,

London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.

And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.

That’s the key to everything.

It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.

It’s not rocket science:

you get what you pay for.

And just as surely,

you also get what you don’t pay for.

Back in 1968 when we got started

we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question:

Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?

You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world

you do whatever you have to do

to attract and keep

the best guides in London –

you want them guiding for you,

not for somebody else.

Bears repeating:

the way we’re structured –

a guides’ cooperative –

is the key to the whole thing.

It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following,

a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.

It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases

distinguished professionals:

By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor

(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.

And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated –

Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)

Stewart and Lisa –

both of them CBEs –

are just a couple of our headline acts.

Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject.  Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z,“internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.

The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star team of guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.

It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former Museum of London archaeologist, historians,

university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes

criminal defence lawyers,

Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors,

a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…

well, you get the idea.

As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament,

every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”

And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar

and the familiar new.

And on that agreeable note…

come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.

And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning

one and all. See ya next time.

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