Cold revenge as Private Eye founder hit by poetic spoof

He’s the grand old man of British satire. But, far from enjoying a tranquil lockdown at his home in Berkshire, Richard Ingrams today finds himself on the receiving end of a spirited spoof poem which scrutinises his sometimes tempestuous romantic life in unsparing detail.

The 42-line ode — entitled ‘Richard Ingrams Writes His Memoirs’, and accompanied by scholarly explanatory notes — was purportedly ‘discovered in the archives of a North American university’.

But I can disclose that the author is, in fact, American academic Dr Kevin Gardner, who last year published Harvest Bells, a compilation of some of the lesser known poems by the late sir John Betjeman.

However, he inadvertently included a poem about the unmasking of sir Anthony Blunt, surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures when Blunt was stripped of his knighthood after being exposed as a former soviet spy.

Far from being by Betjeman, the poem was, in fact, a parody jointly composed by Ingrams and cartoonist Barry Fantoni, and originally published in satirical magazine Private eye in 1979. so is this Gardner’s revenge? ‘I hope Richard’s sense of humour about himself is secure,’ Gardner tells me from Baylor University in Texas.

His mischievous masterpiece details the end of Ingrams’ 30-yearlong first marriage — after he became entangled with Deborah Bosley, nearly three decades his junior — and his second marriage:

Ingrams, 83, who did indeed marry his goddaughter, sara soudain, nine years ago, appreciates the quality of Gardner’s verse.

‘I’m very amused by it,’ he assures me. But he is not letting the American off the hook for failing to spot the spoof Betjeman poem which he and Fantoni concocted decades ago.

‘He makes a point of saying how carefully he researches everything and spends years checking out various things, but he never checked with Ian Hislop or anyone at Private eye. Nor did the publishers.

‘And he was very proud of the fact that he’d caught Betjeman out in a mistake about the “River Talbot” [instead of the River Kennet].’

‘Still I like the younger ladies, always find myself beguiled Wonder will my latest last? married to my own godchild’.