Private Eye Annual 2008

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Almost 4 stars but...
Comment: This is almost worth 4 stars. The humour and wit on the pages of this book is undeniable and will be a condensed treat for Private Eye fans. But if there's a fault, and it's not necessarily from Private Eye's end, it's that many of the lampooned news stories will be forgotten by the time the annual is published.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A satirical swipe from the masters of m (That's enough. -Ed)
Comment: As the sun sets on the old millennium (or is it just the first year of the new millennium? I'm too old to remember) the Private Eye team, headed by editor Ian Hislop, show once and for all that they are far superior to Mohammed Al-Fugger's millions of unsold copies of the humorous magazine 'Punch'. That glossy rag is only one of the Eye's favourite targets, along with countless others that are guaranteed to make your in-jokes unintelligible to dinner-party guests. Buy two and give one to your partner - so there's someone else who'll understand your references. Private Eye mocks so many areas of society and political views that one has to wonder whether contributors have any beliefs at all. Lookalikes, E.J. Thribb poems, I-Spy and newspaper cuttings all appear regularly, as do columnists Glenda Slagg, Polly Filler and the ubiquitous Phil Space, who sets about the daunting task of churning out thousands of words on any current news item (from 'Man On TV Splits Up With Blonde Wife' to 'Woman Who Used To Be On TV But Isn't Any More Isn't As Fat Now As She Was Before') to fill up the pages of such papers as the Sexpress, the Grauniad, the Indescribablyboring and the Spectacularlystupid. The Eye takes no prisoners whilst satirising, so after coverage of a major tragedy you can expect to see four or five letters from disgusted, sensitive souls from Tunbridge Wells saying how they're sympathetically cancelling their subscriptions. But Private Eye also has a serious side. It regularly exposes major cant and corruption, and gives serious criticism of anything worth commenting upon; sadly, only the articles and cartoons find their way into the annual. This is still a good enough reason for buying the book: at best, Private Eye is a hilarious work of genius; at worst, only very, very funny. (Will this do? -O.L.)

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Private Eye is required reading, as much for its straight journalism as for its satire, and the Annual has long been a fail-safe gift. As usual it takes the form of a scrap book of pieces from the year's Private Eye magazines, focusing on humorous pieces. Consequently, the book largely comprises short satirical squibs, along with spoof newspaper articles and letters and longer serials such as Never Too Old--a romantic novel based on the life of Rupert Murdoch which is as sharp on the genre as it is about the protagonists. Through these pieces, the Annual builds up a comprehensive overview of the year's news stories from Alan Clark's death to Big Brother with stories such as the Dome and the state of the rail service receiving extra scrutiny. These sections are particularly rewarding--the Railtrack disaster, for example, is covered from all sides in a variety of media, so that one spoof article highlights the attitude of hacks to train crashes, while another reports on Prescott's "firm undertaking to spend as much money as was necessary to close the stable door after the recent 'bolting' incident". At the same time a cartoon represents Blair telling Prescott "Good thinking, John--we've privatised the blame".

Cartoons feature strongly throughout. The Eye has some of the best artists in the country working for it and most are represented here, ranging from the black humour of McLachlan and Honeysett, whose scratchy line drawings have a beautiful delicacy which renders their subjects all the more disturbing, to the keenly observed social commentary of Heath, Pilbrow and Ken Pyne.

In the cartoon which forms the frontispiece of the annual Hunter observes that "A book is not just for Christmas". Although the Private Eye Annual is often to be found under the tree on Christmas morning, it gives pleasure throughout the year. --Anoushka Alexander