The History of Satire with Ian Hislop

Dominic Sandbrook (0:09)

Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Sandbrook here. I just thought I'd jump on to introduce this special new bonus episode. It's one of the talks that we had at The Rest Is History Festival, which took place this summer at Hampton Court Palace. It's with the editor of the satirical magazine, Private Eye, Ian Hislop. Ian was talking to me on stage about the history of satire in Britain. This fits perfectly into something that we'll be discussing next week, because we will at long last be returning to the French Revolution. One of the things that Ian was talking about on stage was the way that British satirists responded to the French Revolution, in particular, people like James Gillray and the late 18th century satirists who were mocking Napoleon and were mocking the excesses of the Jacobins before that. Anyway, Ian's on great form. I hope you really enjoy it. I'm sure you will. Bye bye.

Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon. I hope you've had a wonderful day and we're finally approaching the climax of the afternoon, the headline act, you might say.

The history of satire is a brilliant window into the story of Britain over the last few centuries. So it's something that I really wanted to do at this festival. And I knew that we needed a really great guest. Somebody who's actually never been on The Rest Is History, but who for everybody in Britain personifies the national tradition of poking fun at the great and the good. He is the editor of the best loved and the longest running satirical publication in 20th and 21st century British history. He's a familiar face to many of us from our TV screens. He is of course the great Ian Hislop.

That's a very brisk walk on stage, Ian.

Ian Hislop (2:07)

Yeah, well, after that introduction, I thought, no, it's not going to get any better. I might as well just go. Thank you.

Dominic Sandbrook (2:13)

No, you're clearly meaning business.

So let's get straight into the subject. Yes, The History of Satire, a personal history of satire, I guess. So you have been editing Private Eye magazine, by far the most famous satirical publication in Britain, since the 1980s?

Ian Hislop (2:31)

1986, I took over as editor. That's 40 years.

Dominic Sandbrook (2:35)

40 long years, 40 glorious years, some might say.

Ian Hislop (2:38)

I said at the time, cause I was quite young, I said, Oh, thank you.

Dominic Sandbrook (2:42)

That's a big round.

Ian Hislop (2:43)

Come on, feels a little like charity, but I'll take it early. Now, when I got the job, I made a speech saying I would possibly do it for a few years at most.

Dominic Sandbrook (2:58)

Right.

Ian Hislop (2:59)

And then I would move on to something else. And I never found anything else. So I'm still there.

Dominic Sandbrook (3:05)

So I mean, so many big questions for satire.

This morning, we did an event about Weimar Germany. And of course, your proprietor, I believe, at Private Eye, your original proprietor, Peter Cook, famously talked about Weimar's history of satire and how effective it was, didn't he?

Ian Hislop (3:23)

Yes. Whenever Peter Cook, who owned the bulk of shares in the magazine for most of the three or four decades, people would say to him, how effective is satire? And he said, well, those cabarets in Berlin, they certainly stopped Hitler.

And Peter was realistic about what satire could achieve. But he was also the same person who would weep when Paul Foote's investigations finally got someone released from jail, or a particularly good joke had run for 10 years and seemed to have some effect. So what I will say about satire is people say, well, you haven't toppled the government, have you? And I will say, well, that's your job.

Dominic Sandbrook (4:07)

Right.

Ian Hislop (4:07)

You've got to vote. What satire tries to do, and I think it's the best you can hope for, is to present the case, to crystallise an argument or a point of view inside a joke.

Dominic Sandbrook (4:22)

Of course.

Ian Hislop (4:22)

And the joke is, it's a very British tradition. It's about 400 or 500 years, we've basically been doing the same thing.

And I noticed I ran a picture bubble in last week's issue of Private Eye. There was a headline saying, Royal Prince jailed for sexual assault. And underneath, we had a picture of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. And he was saying, few, it's not me, it's the Norwegians.

As indeed it was. And then I looked up an etching of Gillray from about 300 years ago. And a man came in to George III and said, they've shot the king. And he said, what? Shot. And the man said, yeah, the king of Sweden. And I thought, I've just published the same joke. 300 years later. And I constantly find that, that essentially we are doing the same thing, trying to make the same points and often in the same way.