Talk:Private Eye

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A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Lunchtime O&. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 May 12 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:52, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Recent removals
Re this repeated removal, "abuse is not hostility"?? I see both of these as well-sourced examples of "accusations of hostility". Why is "controversy" also required. That's just part of the section heading? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:37, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I support the two removals (Hirohito and LBGT/feminism). Those paragraphs give examples of the magazine's content without providing evidence of subsequent out-of-the-ordinary criticism or controversy. --Wire723 (talk) 11:31, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Time for a new cover image for the magazine or something?
Considering the present cover image on the article is from an issue over a decade old, maybe this is due for a more semi-recent fair use image to replace it, perhaps. Shawn Is  Here : Now in colors 05:32, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Hom Sap
The name of the late David Austin's "Hom Sap" cartoon, about a Greek philosopher, obviously was short for "homo sapiens," but it also recalled the common saying "verb sap," which is short for "verbum sapienti satis est." A word, to the wise, is enough: itself shortened. Private Eye's founders were all from the time when schoolboys were taught Latin, and to them the phrase was familiar and needed no explanation. Before adding this to the list of in-jokes, I really need a reference to the original saying. I had assumed it came from Horace, but it was already familiar in his time. Apparently it occurs in both Plautus and Terence, who both wrote more than a century earlier. Can anyone dig deeper? NRPanikker (talk) 00:49, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Did Ian Hislop say Private Eye is "not anti-MMR"?
As far as I can tell, no, he didn't. Ben Goldacre did not formally interview him for any of his Guardian or Bad Science columns. The reference verifying this claim ultimately goes to https://web.archive.org/web/20081012165445/https://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/#comment-22012, which is comment #57 on one of Ben Goldacre's articles, where Ben Goldacre is chatting with his blog readers. The current incarnation of the blog has wiped the comments at some point. Ben Goldacre said: "i met ian hislop once - obviously i was just slightly starstruck - and he had some kind of story about how private eye aren’t really anti-mmr. i can’t remember what it was so it might have been a bit tortuous.". This isn't a solid reference.

The nearest things I can find are:
 * 1) Heather Mills (the author of the Private Eye MMR special) wrote in Private Eye around November 2004, in response to Brian Deer's expose of Wakefield, "Private Eye is not anti-vaccine and has never said Dr Wakefield hypothesis is right"
 * 2) Ian Hislop was interviewed by Simon Mayo  on BBC Radio 5 Live on 12 December 2008, and said "I really don't know where I stand on that. I feel we have done what we did. We have asked the questions, Wakefield himself said 'I hope I'm wrong about this'"

Due to Hislop's equivocation, and the lack of a reliable source, I'm deleting that sentence. The subsequent paragraph of MD's column is a more reliable source of the magazine's conciliatory attitude to the vaccine. 213.31.88.122 (talk) 04:06, 8 December 2023 (UTC)