Private Eye
Sir : I had been meaning to write and thank you for your courageous and admirable support for Private Eve during our recent and continuing difficulties. As far as I know your paper is the only one that has dared to raise editorially the various legal novelties in the case such as the suing of distributors which if taken up by others would pose a real threat to everybody.
Meanwhile however, I must try to intervene to try to separate my two distinguished contributors Christopher Booker and Auberon Waugh who are in danger of making themselves look foolish and boring by conducting a private quarrel in public. I think it was a pity that Bron spoiled an otherwise excellent piece of philosophical speculation on the size of a well-known organ by taking a side swipe at Christopher. However, Christopher started it all, and I suppose he is responsible for what followed and must therefore bear the brunt of this rebuke.
I cannot myself join in the chorus of indignation and outrage directed at poor Christopher. I do not personally find his attitude offensive—only mystifying. Chesterton commented somewhere on the habit people have of making astonishing remarks in parenthesis: 'In 1649 King Charles I was condemned to be executed by a council presided over by Bradshaw (whose mother was a walrus)'. I find the most extraordinary part of Christopher's outburst his reference to 'current legal controversies, about which I know nothing'. When you consider that these 'current legal controveries' have been going on since the beginning of the year. have been reported in the newspapers at length, discussed in paragraphs in the Spectator and in letters to the Times, and that I myself have been able to talk of nothing else for months, and that during all this time Christopher has been in and out of the Private Eye offices, sitting patiently waiting while I engage in interminable conversations with lawyers, journalists and policemen, while photographers come to take mY picture and camera crews arrive from Australia to discuss the controversies— while in short, I am taking part, rather against my will, in what is now a cause célèbre—and that after all this Christopher can stand up and refer to 'current legal controversies about which I know nothing —well, well, ahem. Is there not a subconscious echo of 'a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing' in that disclaimer ?
It would be pointless to embark on a detailed rebuttal of Christopher's latest piece. All I will say is that by attacking Private EYe for printing stories without checking he has put himself into what can best be described as a mote-and-beam situation. Apparently acting on the rather naïve assumption that If the defendant in a libel action apologises and pays up ergo he is completely in the wrong. Christopher quotes three cases in which Private Eye has been involved and strenuously defends the plaintiffs—Stassinopoulos, Bethell and Gray—three pure white lambs if ever there were. In each case he has spoken to the aggrieved persons and heard their side of the story, but he has never bothered to check the other side, perhaPs because he is nervous of what he might find. These stories are seldom black and white and the Bethell one in particular, which involved another plaintiff whom ChristoPher does not refer to, is especially distorted 1n the Booker version. If Christopher had spoken to Bron Waugh or Paul Foot before sending off his piece he would have reached this view himself. If his concern is with the truth rather than the defence of his friends then I will be happy to show him the files.
And now I hope and pray that this brief and sterile argument will come to an end and that we all unite to defeat the common enemy, whose name for the moment escapes me.
Richard Ingrams Private Eye, 34 Greek Street, London W1
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