My Haven

IAN HISLOP The Have I Got News For You team captain and editor of Private Eye, 60, in his office at the satirical magazine

1 SCENE-STEALER

One of our Have I Got

News For You viewers drew this fine picture of me with my cat Colin. The show’s been running for

30 years and we managed to keep it going from our front rooms despite the lockdown. I thought I’d shut Colin in the kitchen for one show, but he made a surprise entrance and I picked him up. I’ve never had such fan mail. There was I thinking the public was interested in my satirical insights into current affairs, but actually they thought, ‘That’s a great cat.’

2 WARTIME WIT

This theatre poster promoted the 2017 West End run of The Wipers Times, a play I co-wrote. It told the story of two British officers who found a printing press in a cellar in the Belgian town of Ypres [mispronounced Wipers] in 1916 and created a brilliant, defiant and deliberately flippant satirical magazine for the troops. I’m obsessed with the First World War and find it endlessly moving and inspiring.

3 POP-UP STAR

Liz Hurley once got it into her head I’d been rude about her in print. She later sweetly wrote to me, ‘I’m terribly sorry. I’ve given interviews saying you’ve been mean to me and I confused you with the journalists

AA Gill or Toby

Young.’ With the letter came this Liz

Hurley pop-up. It’s rare that anybody apologises to me for anything.

4 UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE

These are early copies of Passing Wind, the first satirical magazine I edited while I was still a student at Oxford University. I did an interview with the then Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams for the magazine and he invited me to send in jokes. I became a regular Private Eye contributor, eventually taking over as editor in 1986.

5 REVENGE IS SWEET

Former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken sued Private Eye as part of his great ‘Sword of Truth’ campaign against the Press, who had exposed his corrupt arms dealings. He was then sent to jail for perjury. Eventually we got a cheque back to cover our legal costs when Aitken was declared bankrupt, and I kept this photocopy. It was so pleasing and is a reminder that journalism is sometimes worth doing.

6 PUPPET MASTER

It was great fun writing for Spitting Image, which had 15 million viewers at its peak. This is a model of David Owen, who founded the SDP, with ‘little’ David Steel in his pocket. Steel, the Liberal leader, was annoyed Owen was getting the lion’s share of the Sdp-liberal Alliance’s publicity, so we exaggerated that, with Harry Enfield doing a very funny Steel voice and Chris Barrie voicing Owen. I left Spitting Image in 1990 when Mrs Thatcher resigned – and it was only a matter of weeks before they made a puppet of me. I was very flattered once I’d got over the appalling disloyalty.