The World Is Lovely Sporadic trivialities aimed to please

Cancelling My Subscription

I've bought Private Eye enough times over the last few years that it would certainly have been worth my while to subscribe. And it seems like every fortnight they publish some stupid inanity like this.

If I were writing in the Eye, I'd put this down to Ian Hislop getting touchy about the ribbings he gets for his private education on Have I Got News For You. But that isn't one of the many ways in which I'm ridiculous, so I'll have to blame it on a desperate attempt to fill column inches.

In the past, it's usually at least seemed like the unpleasant collateral damage from the Eye's scattergun journalism: they run with everything even slightly dodgy they can find, and so uncover the bad at the cost of occasionally looking like a bunch of petty, unimaginative tits. There's something noble about that – or perhaps not noble, but something altogether more useful. It's captured by the name of the magazine, and it's the reason Hislop spends so much of his time defending libel cases.

But this is such self-parody it would be better placed in the Eye's back pages than its front. It takes the usual tenuous, unfounded accusation of self-interest – the disfigured heart of many a Private Eye column inch – and gives it that magic sprinkling of satiric absurdity. The reasons that the cabinet is mostly made up of white ex-public schoolboys are exactly the same as the reasons that high-up positions in the media – or in law, or in medicine – are dominated by white ex-public schoolboys. So no, it isn't a coincidence, and that's surely the point?

The funny thing is, I don't think this would annoy me at all if it weren't for that irritating little Private Eye 'er'. That tiny syllable, nestled away safely between its commas, is apparently the Eye's way of making it's stupid accusations without acknowledging how ridiculous they are. If the point was made outright, it would show off its own silliness. But more revealingly, if that little 'er' were taken away, the last sentence would magically transform into a supporting case for Viner's point.

I shall be taking out a subscription and cancelling it immediately.