So farewell Ingrams, a great editor
Nigel Dempster
INSIDE PRIVATE EYE by Peter McKay
4th Estate, £9.95
In a decade a new generation will be puzzled as their elders reminisce about the great years of Private Eye, just as the young of today yawn as their parents bang on about satire, the Swinging Sixties and the seminal television programme That Was The Week That Was. In the month that the Eye has its first new editor in 23 years it has altered course irrevocably but, like a supertanker, it will take some time before the direction becomes obvious. Circulation is at an all time high, perhaps 240,000 copies an issue, but nevertheless there are those, myself included, who believe that the Eye is in an irreversible decline and will not last out the decade.
The reasons are contained in a new book about the magazine and gossips, if not historians, should be indebted to Peter McKay for writing Inside Private Eye to mark its 25th anniversary and, coin- cidentally, the departure of guiding force Richard Ingrams, who heads towards re- tirement with annual emoluments of around £25,000 a year but says he will still attend Gnome House three days a fort- night. For Ingrams, 49, the continued prosperity of the Eye is vital — without any inherited wealth and shares in the maga- zine which are virtually unrealisable, his future rests with the pension plan that the Eye has set up for him. No Eye, no pension of any significance. Thus Ingrams has carefully selected his successor, the much- derided Ian Hislop, who at 26 has the energy and ambition to sustain the maga- zine's profitability. He is widely expected to cut out the crippling libel costs — estimated at more than £500,000 in the last three years.
Quite simply his Eye will not publish controversial items. Thus stories — the mainstay of the magazine through the Poulson, Maudling, Goldsmith and Helen Smith years — are out and jokes are in. Investigative journalism, which Private Eye pioneered, is to give way to Comic Cuts.
For 13 years I contributed to virtually every issue of Private Eye, often without pay and at some financial sacrifice to myself. But what the hell I thought, it's a deserving cause. During the Goldsmith drama I raised more than £6,000 for the Eye and worked without salary. I fought two Eye related court cases myelf at a personal cost of around £15,000 (two years income after tax) and even wrestled with the redoubtable Johnny Kwango at a char- ity evening at Stamford Bridge to raise money for the Goldenballs Fund. On many occasions Dave Cash, the magazine's man- aging director, told me my Grovel column was one of the major selling points of the Eye. All this changed in March last year while Ingrams was away with back trouble. At 11.50 one Friday morning I was called off the squash court to take a telephone call from Liz Elliott, a longtime Eye staffer (and now Sally Deedes, the consumer columnist). Hislop was worried, she said, as there was no Grovel column and could I supply one? I said I would see what I could do and went from my club to Gnome House, although I had other pressing matters — Robert Maxwell was wooing me with 'an open chequebook' to work for the Mirror.
I wrote a Grovel column, and included one item about Cecil Parkinson and his latest secretary which had been sent anony- mously to Grovel. When I handed over the copy to Hislop, I informed him that I had no personal knowledge about the Parkin- son item. Not heeding this warning, Hislop went ahead and published, drawing a famous injunction from the former Secret- ary of State. The issue had to be withdrawn but another was printed the following week. Sales soared with all the publicity and, eventually, the matter was settled for less than £15,000 — well worth it, said Mr Cash, watching the sales figures continue to grow.
Hislop sought to blame anyone but himself for the debacle. Instead of accept- ing editorial responsibility, he 'revealed' that the item was mine. I retaliated by telling a Sunday Times reporter that I had warned Hislop (his memory of all this is rather different) and informed Ingrams that I could never again work for an Eye with which Hislop was associated. Since then the magazine has written about me in almost every issue, sometimes five times in an issue, and last month, following an absurd allegation that I took a £6,000 bribe to write favourably about a prominent millionaire, drew a writ for libel from me. Like the school bully who is finally round- ed on and attacked back, the Eye now says: 'Why did Nigel do that?'
My story, recounted by my Fleet Street colleague McKay, with whom I once shared the Grovel chores, is part of the gossipy background which abounds in In- side Private Eye. McKay deduces, correctly in my view, that Ingrams was too involved in his future plans to get embroiled and gambled that I would return in due course. He took Hislop's side without even holding a post-mortem. Politics and pensions dic- tated that Ingrams, once a fearless crusad- er willing to be jailed over the Goldsmith affair, thought of his own interests. As McKay writes: 'Dempster had become another "Yesterday's Man". He could be thrown to the wolves.'
The affair is symptomatic of the decline of the Eye's original ideals which caused many establishment figures, despite being pilloried, to act as apologists. 'Yes', they would say, 'the Eye has many faults, the mistakes are silly, the libels unnecessary but it has been a force for good. Remem- ber Maudling and Poulson . . .' Yes, yes, but Poulson was 1970 and there has been no expose of that calibre since. Goldsmith was an attempt to recreate Poulson-type waves but the Eye reckoned without the financier's tenacity. A decade on Sir James is regarded as one of the world's outstand- ing businessman with, according to Forbes magazine, a personal fortune in excess of £500 million But the Eye neither forgives nor forgets. It still snipes away at Sir James little realising that the attack is like a pea-shooter on the hide of a rhinocerous. By failing to find worthwhile new targets, the Eye makes the error of continuing the attack on old foes and has become virtually unreadable in the process. Bring on Comic Cuts! R. Eye. P.
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