Private Eye: An Apology

On Monday Fagburn quoted the following lines from an article about Nigel Evans MP by Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail.

The first public suggestion that Evans was living a lie came in an article in Private Eye in 1993, which said he had been seen ‘canoodling’ with a young man in his ground-floor flat near Victoria in central London. Evans angrily telephoned the editor Ian Hislop to deny the story, but the report was well sourced and there was no retraction or apology.

Fagburn commented; "If true, this reflects pretty badly on Private Eye."
But Private Eye's Adam Macqueen tells us: "He’s talking bollocks about Private Eye. We’ve scoured the archives here, and found no trace of any such article. Ian has no memory of ever speaking to Evans either…"
Fagburn is glad to have been given the opportunity to clarify this matter, and, more importantly, to remind ourselves, as much as our readers, that Andrew Pierce writes bollocks.

• There's an interesting section on the magazine's changing relationship with The Gays, in Adam's excellent book, Private Eye: The First 50 Years An A-Z, under G.

PS Today's Times has a rather childish interview with Nigel Evans - It Wasn't Us, Massage Parlour Says Of Rape Suspect MP's Bruised Head - which, as the headline may suggest, is almost entirely about Evan's having a bruise on his head.

In an interview yesterday in his Commons office, Mr Evans, 55, hit back at the coverage of the injury, accusing newspapers of making “inferences” about his sexuality.
The MP for Ribble Valley, who is gay, said that although some reports had been balanced and fair, he had been “hurt” by scepticism about the mark. “You think, if I was heterosexual would they be inferring some of these things? It hurts.”