List of regular mini-sections in Private Eye
Encyclopedia
The following is a list of regularly appearing mini-sections appearing in the British satirical magazine Private Eye
. These are mostly based on clippings from newspapers sent in by readers, often for a cash fee.
"x is the new y
", e.g. "Black is the new brown", "Basel is the new St Tropez" and so forth. Even after a recent trend for certain journalists to preface their remarks with "At the risk of appearing in Private Eye
...", remarks of this kind have not prevented many such journalists from receiving entries in the column, and Ian Hislop
, editor of the Eye, was quoted himself in one issue.
wine columnist, wrote to the magazine complaining that "every time I describe a wine as anything other than red or white, dry or wet, I wind up in Pseud's Corner". Around 1970, editor of the Radio Times
Geoffrey Cannon regularly appeared because of his habit of using "hippie
" argot
out of context in an attempt to appear "with it" and trendy. Simon Barnes
, a sports writer on The Times
, has been regularly quoted in the column for many years. The column now often includes a sub-section called Pseuds Corporate, which prints unnecessarily prolix extracts from corporate press releases and statements.
in "Pedants'", which has variously appeared as "Pedants", "Pedant's" or "Ped'ants Corner". It was renamed in 2008 as "Pedantry Corner" after the suggestion of a reader.
Spy magazine in its "Separated at Birth?" section. On one occasion, Robert Maxwell
successfully sued the Eye for printing a made-up letter 'lookaliking' him with one of the Kray twins
. Although the comparison was deemed an artistic interpretation and not amenable at law, the facts that (a) the letter had been composed by Richard Ingrams
and (b) that the magazine often hinted (correctly, as it turned out) that Maxwell was a crook, were taken as proof of defamatory intent.
. This section has been criticised by some as reflecting the Eye staff's penchant for ridiculing those they consider less educated than themselves. Occasionally, Dumb America, Dumb Ireland, Dumb Australia and other countries are also featured.
, former editor of the News of the World
(owned by Rupert Murdoch
) declaring Rupert Murdoch "the world's greatest living journalist."
s and other theatrical celebrities. The term 'luvvie' already existed as a derogatory noun for pretentious, overblown, narcissistic people of an artistic or dramatic bent. The column was briefly renamed Trevvies for several issues in the mid-1990s after Trevor Nunn
described use of the term as offensive “as calling a black man a ‘nigger’”.
, for whom the column is named, but expanded to quotes from others, notably including Murray Walker
. The name of this feature has since spawned derivative terms in unrelated fields such as "Warballs" (spurious references to the September 11, 2001 attacks), "Dianaballs" (overly sentimental references to Diana, Princess of Wales). Any other subject can be covered, as long as it is appropriately suffixed by -balls, such as Tsunamiballs
.
speaking in the House of Commons. Common inclusion in this section gave The Guardian
a reputation for common typographical errors, earning it the nickname The Grauniad.
" sign situated next to a "Do not sit on the fence" notice; an Indonesian restaurant named "Caffe Bog" and so on.
by claiming to provide 'solutions' where a simpler phrasing would seem more appropriate, such as describing cardboard box
es as "Christmas Ornament Storage Solutions".
remarking that, "the shooting left a horrible atmosphere here for a while. It made you aware of all the terrible things that go on. But I don't think it has affected house prices."
John Birt, who was particularly associated with that kind of language. Nowadays extracts are almost always taken from BBC job adverts or press releases announcing senior BBC appointments. The column features an illustration of a Dalek
, a reference to Dennis Potter
's 1993 James MacTaggart Memorial lecture where he described Birt (alongside Marmaduke Hussey) as a "croak-voiced Dalek."
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
. These are mostly based on clippings from newspapers sent in by readers, often for a cash fee.
Number Crunching
Comparing numerical figures relating to a current event with others that make the event seem comical/bizarre/despicable.Going Live
Highlighting the often unnecessary use by rolling news programmes of outside broadcasts of reporters speaking to camera simply as an alternative to having a studio-based commentary.The Neophiliacs
Examples of journalists employing the clichéCliché
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...
"x is the new y
The new black
"_____ is the new black" is a snowclone used to indicate the sudden popularity or versatility of an idea at the expense of the popularity of a second idea. It is the originator of the phrasal template "X is the new Y". The phrase seemed to have started in the 1950s or 1960s and became very popular...
", e.g. "Black is the new brown", "Basel is the new St Tropez" and so forth. Even after a recent trend for certain journalists to preface their remarks with "At the risk of appearing in Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
...", remarks of this kind have not prevented many such journalists from receiving entries in the column, and Ian Hislop
Ian Hislop
Ian David Hislop is a British journalist, satirist, comedian, writer, broadcaster and editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye...
, editor of the Eye, was quoted himself in one issue.
Pseuds Corner
Listing pompous and pretentious quotations from the media. At various times different columnists have been regular entrants, with varied reactions. At one point in the 1970s, Pamela Vandyke Price, a Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
wine columnist, wrote to the magazine complaining that "every time I describe a wine as anything other than red or white, dry or wet, I wind up in Pseud's Corner". Around 1970, editor of the Radio Times
Radio Times
Radio Times is a UK weekly television and radio programme listings magazine, owned by the BBC. It has been published since 1923 by BBC Magazines, which also provides an on-line listings service under the same title...
Geoffrey Cannon regularly appeared because of his habit of using "hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
" argot
Argot
An Argot is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job,...
out of context in an attempt to appear "with it" and trendy. Simon Barnes
Simon Barnes
Simon Barnes is an English journalist. He is currently Chief Sports Writer of The Times. He also writes a column on wildlife in the Saturday edition of The Times....
, a sports writer on The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, has been regularly quoted in the column for many years. The column now often includes a sub-section called Pseuds Corporate, which prints unnecessarily prolix extracts from corporate press releases and statements.
Pedants' Corner
A sub-section of the letters page devoted to pedantic corrections of or additions to previous articles or readers' letters. This has included several letters on the use of the apostropheApostrophe
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
in "Pedants'", which has variously appeared as "Pedants", "Pedant's" or "Ped'ants Corner". It was renamed in 2008 as "Pedantry Corner" after the suggestion of a reader.
Just Fancy That!
Spot comparing what individuals or newspapers have said about particular subjects at various times to reveal contradictions, corruption and hypocrisy.Lookalikes
Comparing two famous individuals who look alike; frequently the two have an ironic connection too which is pointed out by the reader who submits the piece. The captions relating to the two individuals are also swapped around, implying that even the magazine cannot tell which individual is which. The sender often finishes with the phrase "might they perhaps be related?" and/or "I think we should be told." This feature was copied by the AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Spy magazine in its "Separated at Birth?" section. On one occasion, Robert Maxwell
Robert Maxwell
Ian Robert Maxwell MC was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and former Member of Parliament , who rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire...
successfully sued the Eye for printing a made-up letter 'lookaliking' him with one of the Kray twins
Kray twins
Reginald "Reggie" Kray and his twin brother Ronald "Ronnie" Kray were the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s...
. Although the comparison was deemed an artistic interpretation and not amenable at law, the facts that (a) the letter had been composed by Richard Ingrams
Richard Ingrams
Richard Ingrams is an English journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, and now editor of The Oldie magazine.-Career:...
and (b) that the magazine often hinted (correctly, as it turned out) that Maxwell was a crook, were taken as proof of defamatory intent.
Dumb Britain
Bizarre, ignorant or otherwise humorous answers to questions given by contestants on British television and radio quiz shows, compiled by Marcus BerkmannMarcus Berkmann
-Life:Educated at Highgate School and Worcester College, Oxford, he began his career as a freelance journalist, contributing to computer and gaming magazines...
. This section has been criticised by some as reflecting the Eye staff's penchant for ridiculing those they consider less educated than themselves. Occasionally, Dumb America, Dumb Ireland, Dumb Australia and other countries are also featured.
Order Of The Brown Nose (O.B.N.)
Highlighting the behaviour of those who have allegedly been sycophantic to those in authority, particularly in media and politics, such as Phil HallPhil Hall (journalist)
Phil Hall is a British PR consultant and former newspaper editor.Hall entered journalism in 1974, as a reporter on the Dagenham Post. He then moved to the Ilford Recorder and subsequently filled a sub-editor post on the Newham Recorder, but returned to reporting at the Sunday People...
, former editor of the News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
(owned by Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
) declaring Rupert Murdoch "the world's greatest living journalist."
Luvvies
Reader-submitted feature recording humorously pretentious quotations from thespianActor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
s and other theatrical celebrities. The term 'luvvie' already existed as a derogatory noun for pretentious, overblown, narcissistic people of an artistic or dramatic bent. The column was briefly renamed Trevvies for several issues in the mid-1990s after Trevor Nunn
Trevor Nunn
Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera...
described use of the term as offensive “as calling a black man a ‘nigger’”.
Colemanballs
Collection of gaffes from radio and TV perpetrated by sports commentators and sportsmen, featuring inconsistencies, mixed metaphors, or pretentious and ludicrous statements, such as "and he's missed the goal by literally a million miles" or "if they played like this every week they wouldn't be so inconsistent". This feature originally specialised in quotes from British sports commentator David ColemanDavid Coleman
David Coleman, OBE is an English former sports commentator and TV presenter who worked for the BBC for almost fifty years. In 2000, he was awarded the Olympic Order, the highest honour of the Olympic movement....
, for whom the column is named, but expanded to quotes from others, notably including Murray Walker
Murray Walker
Graeme Murray Walker, OBE is a former Formula One motorsport commentator...
. The name of this feature has since spawned derivative terms in unrelated fields such as "Warballs" (spurious references to the September 11, 2001 attacks), "Dianaballs" (overly sentimental references to Diana, Princess of Wales). Any other subject can be covered, as long as it is appropriately suffixed by -balls, such as Tsunamiballs
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on Sunday, December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake...
.
Newspaper misprints
Quoting amusing misprints from newspapers or unintentionally funny examples of journalism, this section appears throughout the magazine. These often feature misprinted TV guides, such as a reference to a programme called "It came from outer space" with a picture of David CameronDavid Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
speaking in the House of Commons. Common inclusion in this section gave The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
a reputation for common typographical errors, earning it the nickname The Grauniad.
Eye spy
Pictures sent in by readers showing contradictory, ironic, amusing, scatological, or just plain daft images; for example, a temporary "Polling StationPolling station
A polling place or polling station is where voters cast their ballots in elections.Since elections generally take place over a one- or two-day span on a periodic basis, often annual or longer, polling places are often located in facilities used for other purposes, such as schools, churches, sports...
" sign situated next to a "Do not sit on the fence" notice; an Indonesian restaurant named "Caffe Bog" and so on.
Solutions
Instances of companies adopting an unimaginative buzzwordBuzzword
A buzzword is a term of art, salesmanship, politics, or technical jargon that is used in the media and wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context....
by claiming to provide 'solutions' where a simpler phrasing would seem more appropriate, such as describing cardboard box
Cardboard box
Cardboard boxes are industrially prefabricated boxes, primarily used for packaging goods and materials. Specialists in industry seldom use the term cardboard because it does not denote a specific material....
es as "Christmas Ornament Storage Solutions".
Harsh Words
An occasional series devoted to unusual callousness in public, such as a former neighbour of Jill DandoJill Dando
Jill Wendy Dando was an English journalist, television presenter and newsreader who worked for the BBC for 14 years. She was murdered by gunshot outside her home in Fulham, West London; her killer has never been identified....
remarking that, "the shooting left a horrible atmosphere here for a while. It made you aware of all the terrible things that go on. But I don't think it has affected house prices."
Ongoing situations
Subtitled with meaningful and viable scenarios at this moment in time. Recording the nonsense rampant in "on the spot" interviews beginning in the 1970s, as television news coverage went live outside the studio, leading to unrehearsed speeches which naturally tended toward currently fashionable clichés (for example, instead of "there is a siege", "we have an ongoing siege situation").Birtspeak 2.0
A column giving examples of especially convoluted and impenetrable jargon from the BBC. Named for former Director-General of the BBCDirector-General of the BBC
The Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation is chief executive and editor-in-chief of the BBC.The position was formerly appointed by the Board of Governors of the BBC and is now appointed by the BBC Trust....
John Birt, who was particularly associated with that kind of language. Nowadays extracts are almost always taken from BBC job adverts or press releases announcing senior BBC appointments. The column features an illustration of a Dalek
Dalek
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Within the series, Daleks are cyborgs from the planet Skaro, created by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war against the Thals...
, a reference to Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
's 1993 James MacTaggart Memorial lecture where he described Birt (alongside Marmaduke Hussey) as a "croak-voiced Dalek."