Showing posts with label Private Eye. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Private Eye. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 January 2017

Edward Heath: Wasting Police Time

Detectives investigating lurid abuse allegations against Sir Edward Heath have interviewed key figures at Private Eye – because the satirical magazine joked about his sexuality 40 years ago.

Police even visited the current editor, Ian Hislop, to ask what he knew about the former Prime Minister, despite the journalist being a teenager during the period under investigation.

Officers have also tracked down former Downing Street staff to ask them if young men were ever sneaked into Number 10.

Wiltshire Police’s controversial inquiry into Heath – Operation Conifer – has now cost taxpayers almost £900,000, with 17 people still working on it, despite growing demands for it to be shut down.

However, Chief Constable Mike Veale has apologised to MPs and peers for the operation being launched in front of cameras outside Heath’s former house.

It comes after The Mail on Sunday revealed how an expert brought in by police to assess claims that Heath had been linked to a network of paedophiles who held satanic orgies, dismissed them as


In the latest example of what has been branded a farce, Wiltshire Police rang former Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams earlier this month because the journal often made jokes at the expense of Heath when he was PM from 1970 to 1974.

Unmarried Heath had been jokingly dubbed ‘Sailor Ted’ in a reference to rumours that he was gay.

‘The policeman said he wanted to know whether I had any information on Mr Heath,’ said Mr Ingrams.

‘I said, “You’re talking about jokes.” They’d obviously looked through old copies of the Eye to some extent. There were plenty of “Hello, Sailor” type of jokes.’

He added: ‘I told the policeman there was a general subject of speculation about whether the Grocer [Private Eye’s nickname for Heath] was gay or not. He had a dislike of women. He was very rude if he was sat next to women at lunch parties, just ignoring them completely.

‘It did all look like he was gay. But I never heard any evidence of paedophile rumours. It’s a waste of time and public money.’ ...


Mail On Sunday. 

Sake. 

PS Richard Ingrams is a homophobic shitbag.

Friday, 18 March 2016

Advertising: Designed By Robots

Gaytoz.com

Private Eye calls this unforunate pairing of computer-generated ads 'Malgorithms'.

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

The Sun: Panic!


The 80s revival starts here.

NB Shamefully, the byline on this story is The Sun's token gayer, Dan Wootton. *

Dan lists a number of gay celebrities who have died of Aids-related illnesses or are living with HIV, but neglects to mention which The Sun and or The News Of The World tried to 'expose'.

* Readers of Private Eye will know that Mr Wootton regularly takes credit for his Sun Showbiz staff's stories, but this one's so crappy we shouldn't let him off the hook even if he 'only' approved it.

Update: An unbelivably shitty piece by The Mirror's Fleet Street Fox - erm...


This poll was deleted after it was pointed out it was also really shitty...

Saturday, 7 November 2015

John Lewis Xmas Ad: Paedophile Backlash

Today saw the launch of the annual TV campaign from the high street giants, luring customers in ahead of the Black Friday mayhem and mulled wine/mince pie gluttony.

The #ManOnTheMoon ad – currently trending on Twitter – tells the story of a little girl who spreads festive spirit to a lonely OAP on, you guessed it, the moon.With its poignant tagline 'show someone they're loved this Christmas', JL have joined forces with Age UK to raise awareness of the million elderly who can go months without human contact.

However, several citizens of cyberspace have blasted the campaign as "creepy" and "disturbing", questioning why a child would befriend a pensioner.Several folk also suggested the male protagonist could actually be child molester Sidney Cooke...


Daily Star.

Don't be silly, Sidney Cooke, raped and killed boys not girls!

PS Also loving this front page...


PS And from Private Eye...


Peak OJ!

Friday, 25 September 2015

Paul O'Grady: My (Lack Of) Drugs Shame

Mirror.

How refreshing.

Yes, she's got another volume of her steamy memoirs out, Open The Cage, Murphy.

His first, At My Mother's Knee, was famously the only showbiz bios ever to get a rave review in Private Eye's notoriously sniffy, Literary Review; 'Funny, well-observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this.'
"Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this." - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf
"Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this." - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf
"Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this." - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf
Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this. - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf
Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this. - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf

Wednesday, 1 April 2015

Rupert Everett: How The Fallen Have Fallen!

Not owning a tellybox, Fagburn was blissfully unaware that Rupert Everett had made a series of ads for Young's Seafood where he voices a green-eyed hungry cat.
Apparently they've been running since January - here is the latest instalment.
Mind you I asked some TV owners and they had at best but vague recollections.
Anyway, enjoy!

PS Read about them in the new Private Eye, which alleges the concept is a bit of a rip-off.

Monday, 29 December 2014

Fagburn: Death Of The Year

For what man has not wanted to try and kill his ex-boyfriend?

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

Elgin Marbles: To Russia With Love

From the new Private Eye - a cracking issue.

PS The lovely Neil MacGregor on taking an Elgin Marble to St Petersburg as cultural diplomacy.


Taking this homoerotic rock cock to Russia does far more than standing outside their London embassy going 'BOO!'

Friday, 28 November 2014

Harry Styles: Don't Worry Ladies

MY theory that most of us are at least a little bit bisexual is proving to be true in the world of celebrity.

Even notorious lady lover HARRY STYLES, who I’ve seen pull women in a blink of an eye, seems to want to jump on board.

That’s why today marks the inaugural journey of Bizarre’s Bi Bus.

We’ll take it for a ride each time yet another star wants to tell us they’re not only interested in the opposite sex.

Already on board are JESSIE J, DUNCAN JAMES, MEGAN FOX, TOM HARDY, MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ, MEL B, LINDSAY LOHAN and CARA DELEVINGNE.

Now the ONE DIRECTION heart-throb is making yet another bid to get a ticket...

Harry knows exactly what he’s doing – but don’t worry ladies, he’s definitely just teasing.



Think there's a certain Viennese doctor who might have beaten you to that theory about bisexuality by a few years, Dan.

But then according to the latest issue of Private Eye, you're rather fond of taking credit for other people's work. 

Bye-bye (bi bi?).

PS Not holding out much hope for today's papers tbh. 

Thursday, 11 September 2014

Ted Heath: A Bit Stiff

They do say that if you want to keep a secret you should make a speech in the Commons chamber or publish your autobiography. One such memoir dropped through my letterbox years ago: columnists are deluged with unsolicited books. During a major sift through the accumulating heap to see what could go to the charity shop, my hand hovered recently over No Make-Up: Straight Tales from a Queer Life, by Jeremy Norman (2006). Idly I flicked the pages.

It’s a marvellous book. Startlingly candid, unblushingly funny about wealth, privilege and the pursuit of fun, Mr Norman (for ten years a proprietor of Burke’s Peerage and the founder of the Heaven gay nightclub in London) paints an unforgettable picture of gay life in an age of official prohibition.

But it’s his description of Ted Heath that surprises. In a spiky miscellany of vignettes of exotic gay and bisexual men, spies and hedonists, appears a chapter on the late Sir Edward. Norman’s interior-designer partner, Derek Frost, had done work at Ted’s Salisbury house. The former prime minister (says Norman) kept inventing tiny “after-care service” tasks (like re-stitching two cushions) to ask the couple over or get himself invited to their country cottage. “It was clear to us he was lonely, and looking for an excuse to meet, [and that] in his own inhibited way, he was reaching out to us as a gay couple . . .”


Also Private Eye, 1970.
Ted told them he had supported an equal age of consent but “the party rank and file would never have stood for it”. Norman concludes: “I couldn’t help but conclude that he was a deeply closeted gay man . . . That impression was reinforced by his monosyllabic answers to questions about his love life.

“The last time we saw the old boy was [in 2004] when we called on him at Salisbury . . . He was as hospitable as ever. His housekeeper provided some excellent canapés and he opened a bottle of champagne. A curious and unexplained character greeted us at the front door: a young, educated Oriental man who seemed to be a close friend and confidant. He was clearly not an employee, as he stayed with us during our chat . . . No explanation was sought or proffered as to his place in the household.”

Gossip is not always unkind. Like Jeremy Norman I think more affectionately of Ted because of these reflections. They humanise, explain his woodenness, and say something about the injustice that left him with a personal side but one he felt he could not speak about.


Matthew Parris in his Times' column.

Not as controversial as Matthew's last prole-hating column on Clacton-On-Sea.

Wednesday, 20 August 2014

Tony Blair: We're All Going On A Summer Holiday

From the new Private Eye.

Deftly bringing together the two biggest news stories of our time.

PS Headline Of The Week included to lighten the mood.

Wednesday, 6 August 2014

Owen Jones: Lookalike

Private Eye.

Such a shame it took such a short time for Owen to turn into such a Billy Bighead.

Fame, fame, fatal fame...

Our Owen has blocked Fagburn on Twitter, but I presume he is still tweeting variations on; 'By 'eck, let's have a cheeky brew, don't I look young?' etc.

Monday, 14 July 2014

Scandal: Thatcher Accused In Paedo Probe!

Margaret Thatcher personally covered up child abuse ­allegations made against one of her senior ministers, according to explosive new claims.

The Sunday People reports Tory Prime Minister is said to have held a high-powered meeting with the rising star, who was being tipped for promotion, and told him: “You have to clean up your sexual act.”

It followed an allegation that the minister had sexually abused young boys at the home of one of his political allies in 1982.

However the minister apparently ignored the warnings.

It is claimed that four years later he was spotted by police seeking young boys for sex at Victoria railway station in London.

But no action was taken...


Sunday People.

Senior Tory cabinet ministers were supplied with underage boys for sex parties, it is sensationally claimed.

Former Conservative activist Anthony Gilberthorpe said he told Margaret Thatcher 25 years ago about what he had witnessed and gave her names of those involved.

His allegations that he saw top Tories having sex with boys comes after David Cameron launched a Government inquiry into claims of a cover-up.

Anthony, 52, said: “I am prepared to speak to the inquiry. I believe I am a key witness.”

Trawling seedy streets during a Tory conference, Gilberthorpe says he was asked to find underage rent boys for a private sex party at a top hotel...


Sunday Mirror. 

Dolly old Rhoda Boyson
Typical, you take some time off and it all kicks off!
Although it would be amusing if several leading Tories turned out to have turned Brighton and Blackpool hotel rooms into little Salos of sodomy, these two stories may not be quite as EXPLOSIVE! as they seem at first glance.
Westminster is rife with political rivals' smears, and Thatcher simply may not not have believed what she heard about the Tories' young rising star being at the party.
[The late Sir Peter Morrison MP had been caught cottaging with underage boys twice and let off with cautions, but police only confirmed this after his death].

The second story in the Sunday People has more holes than a pair of Primark knickers.
The main four of the accused - Keith Joseph, Rhodes Boyson, Dr Alistair Smith and Michael Havers - are as often happens in tabloids, all conveniently dead.
The other man, a current serving cabinet number, as also oftens in tabloid land, not named.
The following detail is too hilarious for words...

"We then walked into an area where there was a large pool and lots of men either stood around naked or simply wrapped in towels.

“Among the MPs I recognised in there were Keith Joseph and Rhodes Boyson. I saw the Attorney General Michael Havers down there as well.
Penolope Keith Joseph.
“There were a couple of glass tables set up as a mini bar with bottles of spirits on them and there was cocaine on several tables. I saw several boys who were clearly aged between 15 and 16 down there and I saw that a few were performing sex acts on MPs.

“Other young men were acting as waiters walking around with little black bow ties on. I was completely shocked by it because I was still only 20 and I had never seen anything like it.”

Keith Joseph and Rhodes Boyson at a poolside coke and cock party? Sure.

Oh, and shouldn't Mr Gilthorpe be charged with soliciting and procurement?

PS And the most likely currently serving minister is...

Update: Private Eye, August 8th, page 9, show Gilberthorpe is a known liar/fantasist.

Monday, 9 June 2014

Richard Ingrams: So Farewell Then...

In 2005 he quit the Observer as columnist over its pro-Iraq war stance. "That was a said affair. I got on with Roger [Alton, the then editor] fine but unfortunately he was seduced by Alastair Campbell when he was invited round to No 10. These people are impressed by those sort of things." He was, though,fired from the Independent as a columnist by then-editor Chris Blackhurst in 2011. "He invited me to his club, the Reform Club and we had a very nice lunch. I went away thinking he's a decent bloke, seems to like the column. Two days later I got a letter from him saying: 'I enjoyed our lunch and you're fired.'"

"And they brought in this new columnist to replace me, Chris Bryant, the gay vicar." That must have really hurt, I suggest to Ingrams, particularly as you're a committed homophobe? "No, no, no," says Ingrams. He waves away the question when I ask him to expand on this – leaving me unsure if he is denying the hurt or the homophobia. But his hostility to homosexuality is certainly longstanding – it guided Private Eye's long-running opposition to the gay rights movement during his editorship and has led him in the past to tell one interviewer: 'Don't you think it's disgusting what they do?' I think it's very hard, if you're not that way yourself, not to think it's disgusting … The idea that they're just the same as everyone else seems to me just wrong – most of them have terrible lives."

Profile in The Guardian.

Richard Ingrams - one of England's stately homophobes - has resigned, under something of a cloud, as editor of The Oldie, a magazine he founded 22 years ago.

Under Ian Hislop's editorship, Private Eye's infamous homophobia soon disappeared.

Fagburn understands they even employ a known homosexual these days.

Mr Ingrams must be turning in his grey y-fronts.

Wednesday, 2 April 2014

Private Eye: Cartoon Time

From the new Private Eye.

Also contains some stuff about Christopher Jefferies, Paul Flowers, Mark Menzies and Armistead Maupin.

This issue's gayness is overflowing!

Sunday, 2 March 2014

PIEgate: Latest!


'Compound for sins they are inclin’d to,
By damning those they have no mind to:
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipp’d God for spite.
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for.'

Samuel Butler, 1684.

Sunday Times.

Further, PIE was founded in  October 1974, after the GLF had died.

Here is Rod Liddle's original article.

Here is Rod on gay marriage.

And here is that oldie but goody; How can the swine Rod Liddle, who cheated on me within days of our wedding, set himself up as a champion of marriage?

It's by Rachel Royce, who he left for a woman 30 years younger than him - his new lover, Alicia Monckton, soon had this paragon of virtue charged with assault.

This is The Observer...

Paedophiles not actually pictured.


This piece in The Independent is predictably barking.
Fagburn remembers the good old days when unimaginative journalists blamed the 60s for everything.
He once saw Yasmin Alibhai Brown speak at a Stop The War Conference in London.
Her first words; 'I'm not sure why I'm here, I don't want to stop the war...'

Sunday Mirror: 'If these allegations are true...' Which they are probably not.
Will this paedohysteria ever end?

Private Eye.
Update: Oops! 'A senior aide to David Cameron resigned from Downing Street last month the day before being arrested on allegations relating to child abuse images.'
Patrick Rock, who was involved in drawing up the government's policy for the large internet firms on online pornography filters, resigned after No 10 was alerted to the allegations...' Guardian, March 4th.

Wednesday, 19 February 2014

Chris Smith: Flood Damage

Following the floods fiasco in Somerset, Daily Mail attack-dog Andrew Pierce was unleashed from his kennel to do a hatchet job on hapless Environment Agency Chris Smith. He had no shortage of material, Lord Smith of Finsbury being gay, socialist, green, an ex-Islington councillor and a luvvie cum laude with a PhD in poetry.

Pierce swiftly bashed out the required 900 words - only for an urgent command to arrive from the 'Eagle's Nest', aka editor Paul Dacre's office on the third floor, instructing newsdesk lackeys to spike the piece. Other Mail columnists were also ordered to steer clear of Smith in their own pieces.

What conceivable reason might Dacre have wanting to keep on the right side of the former culture secretary? The possibility that Lord Smith must be kept sweet at all costs as he's lined up to be appointed chair of IPSO, the new Independent Press Standards Organisation, is of course too silly to contemplate!

Private Eye.

Update: Or does Lord Smith have plans to be the next BBC Chairman?

Thursday, 6 February 2014

Spencer Livermore: Where Have You Been?

Ed Miliband's first big speech of 2014 promised; "Only if we take on powerful vested interests, from energy to banking, and reform broken markets, can we make the long-term changes Britain needs."

And who is heading Red Ed's election campaign? Step forward Spencer Livermore, who was until recently serving precisely those, er, vested interests.

Livermore was a  Gordon Brown adviser until 2008, when he moved into PR and advertisng. At PR firm Blue Rubiconbhe was in charge of "brand positioning" for firms including Centrica (owner of British gas), Lloyds Banking Group, and other cuddly corporates such as Shell, Coca-Cola and McDonald's. In other words, he shored up big corporate reputations while the likes of British Gas gaily went on raising prices to customers, and Miliband's, chagrin. Just the man to guide Labour back into office!

Private Eye.

In 2007, Pink News declared Spencer "The most powerful gay man in British politics". 
In 2008, he resigned as Gordon Brown's senior strategist when he refused to hold a snap general election.
He then joined Saatchi & Saatchi, but rather fell off the gay politics radar.

Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Paul Flowers: End Of Story

From today's Private Eye.
And kudos to the Eye for not doing a Paul Flowers cover - a Herculean feat.
Though see pages 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 17, 21, 22, 26, 33 and 34.

The Flowers Affair Is Blooming Hypocrisy

I return from Australia and Borneo to a barbarous Britain. Good heavens, what’s all this hoo-ha about the Rev Paul Flowers? Lurid allegations fly. Claims about hard drugs, rent boys, pornography and (unspeakably worse) false expenses claims. The Tory press is in full cry, Cameron and Osborne an Etna and Vesuvius of moral horror. “Aha! Shame! What did Balls know? What was Miliband told?”

Nothing, obviously. Balls and Miliband plainly had no idea. Maybe they should have, but they didn’t. Such things can happen, and do, to any busy boss. Does anyone seriously think . . . hmm, rephrase that: “Could anyone, on sober reflection, seriously think” that a senior British politician, on being told that a chap was under suspicion on all these alleged counts, would have replied “Porno schmorno — who cares? Let’s just overlook it; and appoint him as an adviser, and have him in for tea, and schmooze him, and make him our link with the Co-operative Bank?”

Nonsense. Lots of thoroughly unsuitable people get appointed by mistake. I was once offered a job in British Intelligence, for pity’s sake. When my party’s pack are in full cry about some alleged disgrace in a rival party, I make a habit of pausing, transposing the name tags, and asking myself how indignant I’d be if it were (say) Labour in full cry against George Osborne because he’d courted and been advised by some wealthy potential donor who’d turned out to be a bounder.

I know what I’d say. “Oops. Should have checked. These things happen.” End of story.



Always like it when Parris comes across as a voice of calm and reason - but then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like he loves Thatch... 

PS Paul Flowers Drug Scandal - two men arrested on suspicion of supplying drugs to former Co-op Bank boss - West Yorkshire police confirmed two suspects, aged 26 and 34, were detained at addresses in the Thornton area of Bradford and the Armley area of Leeds. 
Daily Mirror.
Their ages may or may not be of significance...

Thursday, 17 October 2013

Tory Boyz: History, Boys

The play’s historical sections are hampered by the character of the ambitious young Heath. He proves intractable on stage. An intelligent, laconic, elusive and entirely humourless mummy’s boy, Heath never reveals himself. Nor does the play threaten his defences or present him with choices that would force him to open up. My guess is that Graham has been bewitched by late-vintage Heath, the Incredible Sulk, who glowered like a toad on the green benches for three decades.
But Heath in his heyday was refreshing and approachable. For starters, he was called Ted, like some bloke down the pub. His signature attribute was his bonhomie. Everyone in the country could impersonate him. You just had to roar with laughter and let your shoulders trampoline up and down. Compared with the shifty and neurotic Wilson, he was attractive and colourful (yachtsman, maestro), and he gave the impression of being fun to be around. But in this play Heath shows no trace of psychological complexity. He’s like Billy Bunter impersonating a cagey swat. And the script reaches puzzling conclusions about the evolution of the Tory party. If anything, it seems that life was easier for gay Tories in the past. When the closet was the only place to be, that’s where the shrewd politician stayed. And Heath had plenty of time to rehearse credible answers to tricky questions. As I recall there wasn’t much talk of his homosexuality in the 1970s. All the gossip centred on another notorious bachelor whom everyone ‘knew’ was gay: Prince Charles.
The Spectator, the house journal of you-know-who, reviews James Graham's updated Tory Boyz at the Ambassadors Theatre, London.

That "z" is annoying, isn't it?
Almost as annoying as those three grinning poshos in that photo, though maybe that's the point?
"You blue-rinsed bitch!"
Blurb! In the wake of the deep Conservative divide exposed by the recent vote on gay marriage, National Youth Theatre brings its hit production back to the West End after a sold out run at Soho Theatre in 2008. Tory Boyz is a bold and astute political comedy that takes us behind the scenes of the corridors of power at Westminster where saving face and avoiding scandal is the order of the day.

PS The Torygraph wet their Calvins and gave it five stars!