New Delhi: Last week, Britain’s Private Eye magazine, arguably the world’s most irreverent satirical publication in the English language, marked 40 years of Ian Hislop’s editorship – an appointment that has itself become part of media folklore.Over four decades, the 66-year-old journalist has steered the Eye’s relentless, irreverent and hilarious assault on official pomposity and hypocrisy, making royalty, politicians, media barons, journalists, businessmen and other grandees squirm every fortnight since he took charge in 1986.Just 26 when he became editor, Hislop took over the Eye a quarter-century after its launch by Richard Ingrams and a group of fellow journalists, satirists and comedians who distrusted establishment solemnity and set out to expose the gap between public respectability and private behaviour.And though Hislop’s appointment was initially greeted with considerable scepticism by some closely associated with the magazine, Ingrams’s faith in his young successor has been more than vindicated. The Eye’s latest officially audited figures put its average circulation at 228,697 copies per issue for January–June 2026, including more than 171,000 paid subscriptions and around 55,600 single-copy sales at £2.99.That is a remarkable showing for a satirical fortnightly that outsells several long-established British newspapers and periodicals in an era when almost every media outlet chases online clicks. The Eye has no online edition, with Hislop defiantly sticking to the hard copy and readers, including those overseas, have the option of subscribing to the magazine or buying it from newsagents and innumerable commercial establishments, including food malls like Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s.Private Eye’s libel history almost as notorious as its cartoonsOver the years, Hislop has not only preserved the Eye’s irreverence but sharpened its investigative bite, making Britain’s establishment distinctly uncomfortable and often sending its targets scurrying to their lawyers. That willingness to take on the powerful, regardless of the legal consequences, has been central to the magazine’s appeal – but it has also brought some expensively bruising legal battles. So much so that the Eye’s libel history is almost as notorious as its cartoons and unsigned copy and its costly courtroom skirmishes would have beggared less stubborn -and far richer- publications. Consequently, Hislop has been dubbed Britain’s “most-sued” man in recent decades, and these financially bruising battles were, over the years, akin to a German joke – no laughing matter, as Oscar Wilde might aptly have observed.In 1986, for instance, media tycoon Robert Maxwell sued the Eye over allegations that he had financed Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s travel expenses in the hope of securing a peerage. After the magazine was forced to pay damages, Hislop delivered one of his many best-known quips: “I’ve just given a fat cheque to a fat Czech”, a reference to Maxwell’s vast girth and East European ancestry. However, after Maxwell’s mysterious death at sea five years later, in 1991, the ‘bouncing Czech’ as the Eye called him was exposed as a massive fraudster who illegally plundered his employees’ pension funds. But the magazine’s immense popularity was perhaps never more evident than in 1989, when it came perilously close to financial ruin after Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, won £600,000 in libel damages over allegations that she had profited from her husband’s notoriety. Hislop emerged from court declaring: “If that’s justice, then I’m a banana.” The award was reduced to £60,000 on appeal, and thousands of loyal readers rallied to the magazine’s aid through its cheekily named “Banana-balls Fund”. Hislop’s inherent irreverence, it seems, was evident long before he took charge of the Eye.No institution, profession or public figure beyond scrutinyHislop’s only editorial qualification before joining the magazine in the early 1980s was reviving a student satirical publication at Oxford called Passing Wind, which poked fun at university life and the wider establishment. In classic deadpan understatement, he recalled that the magazine’s somewhat loaded scatological association made it somewhat difficult to attract advertising.Hislop had interviewed Ingrams, then the Eye’s editor, and Peter Cook, the celebrated British comedian and satirist who was its majority shareholder, for Passing Wind, and the encounter proved consequential. His first contribution to the Eye appeared in 1980, before he had sat his Oxford finals and after graduating, he became part of the magazine’s staff and, six years later, took over as editor.Ingrams, who went on to found The Oldie in 1992, a witty, irreverent monthly magazine that pokes fun at the pretensions of age and modern life, showed considerable prescience in recognising that the Eye needed an editor prepared to move it beyond society gossip towards what Hislop called “professional gossip”: or, what really went on in the world of politics, media, diplomacy, security, intelligence, banking and business in general and how the people running them behaved when they thought nobody was looking.Ian Hislop has been the editor of Private Eye since 1986. Photo: British Library, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.Under Hislop’s editorship, the Eye broadened its reach. No institution, profession or public figure was beyond scrutiny, and no amount of wealth, status or importance guaranteed immunity from ridicule and caricature. Serious investigative journalism sat happily alongside absurd humour, outrageous cartoons and jokes that could be as juvenile as they were devastating. The Eye’s point was not simply to ridicule the powerful, but to expose their hypocrisies and wrongdoings.And, in keeping with a particularly British strain of eccentricity, the Coach and Horses pub in Soho was for years the setting for the Eye’s legendary lunches, where editors and contributors gathered over food, drink and gossip and to decide the magazine’s editorial content for the forthcoming fortnight. The pub became part of the magazine’s mythology, but it is not known whether this practice still continues, or has shifted elsewhere. But through all the irreverence and mockery, Hislop has held fast to a principle on which he has never compromised that satire and lampoonery should always be aimed at the grandees, the establishment and corporations, not the vulnerable or those least equipped to defend themselves. “I have a residual belief that you should not mock the weak,” the irrepressible Hislop told The Daily Telegraph in a 2012 interview and has stuck to that conviction. The Eye’s A5-sized covers too are iconic, celebrated for their caustically witty headlines and cutting humour, often bordering on brutal. Over the years, many such covers have become legendary, lauded for their ability to sum up complex issues in one striking image and bubble headline, and their refusal to take authority seriously.In September 2026, Royals Rocked by Spencer Memoir took aim at Earl Spencer, Princess Diana’s brother, over his memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, with the line: “The final stage of grief is acceptance… of the book deal!” The joke targeted the lucrative business of turning revelations about the late princess and the royal family into publishing deals. An earlier cover in June, “World Cup Fever Mounts!”, went for Donald Trump, who, clutching the World Cup trophy, declares on the Eye cover: “Me! I’ve already won, everyone says so!” It mocked the US president for whom even an international football tournament becomes an occasion to claim personal victory.England’s royals continually receive special treatment from the Eye, with King Charles III remaining Brian, a moniker given to him by The Eye in the 1990s to signify an ordinary, somewhat eccentric figure who did not fully fit the image of a traditional monarch. His late mother, Queen Elizabeth, was dubbed ‘Brenda ’, while her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, was always ‘Keith’, both christened after a 1969 BBC documentary called Royal Family. Princess Diana was nicknamed Cheryl, a common, working-class name that contrasted her royal status with the more every day and relatable persona the magazine wanted to associate with her, in contrast to her official title as the Princess of Wales.The magazine’s brilliantly penned, albeit somewhat juvenile satire and flood of cartoons have also uncompromisingly targeted successive incumbent UK governments and prime ministers and his cabinet colleagues, Opposition leaders, tycoons, superstars and especially the BBC, which it called the Biased Broadcasting Corporation. The Eye had christened former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer ‘Sir Wooden Horse of Holborn’, referring to his London constituency and his perceived stiff and uncharismatic public personality, while his predecessor Rishi Sunak is ‘Rishi Rich’ after the 1950s comic book brat Richie Rich. Previous Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is ‘BoJo the Clown’ and Tony Blair is simply categorised as ‘Bush’s Poodle’.World leaders were similarly administered the Eye’s irreverent cosh. The French president is identified as ‘Macron: Champion of the 1%’ and Chinese President Xi Jinping as “The new Mao: Not so good at making friends. But Trump, christened ‘The Tangerine Tyrant’ after his tan and ginger-coloured hair and authoritarianism, received special treatment. In its January 24 edition, four days after Trump assumed office, the Eye cover featured an apology to POTUS stating that ‘in common with all other media organisations, we may have in the past given the impression that we thought Mr Trump was a sleazy, deranged, orange-faced man-baby, who was a threat to democracy and who should be in jail rather than the White House.“We now realise,” it continued, “in light of his return to supreme power, that he is in fact a political colossus, the voice of sanity, a champion of liberty, a model of probity and the saviour of the Western world. He is also slim, handsome and young. We would like to apologise, the magazine added, for any confusion caused by our previous statements and thank President Trump for his kind invitation to give him 94 million pounds to attend his inauguration event. The latter was an obvious dig at Trump’s obsession with money and extravagant spending. A footnote cheekily stated that the above statement had not been fact-checked.Others irreverently and frequently featured in The Eye have included the late Mohammad Al-Fayed, the Egyptian owner of London’s iconic department store Harrods and parent of Princess Diana’s lover Dodi, who was labelled the ‘Phoney Pharaoh’ or Muhammad-al-Fugger; Richard Branson and the Virgin Group entrepreneur, was straightforward ‘Beardie’, in a list of parodied celebs and leaders that is interminable and forever evolving.The magazine’s regular biting columns included the ‘Street of Shame’ that exposed media two-facedness, favour-seeking and corrupt journalists, Rotten Boroughs and In The Back which divulged local and federal government lapses, and Colemanballs that featured a collection of absurd and embarrassing quotes from public figures, particularly politicians and TV personalities.Other sections like HP Sauce focused on political scandals, while Square Mile exposed dodgy lobbying, cronyism, and financial mismanagement in London’s fabled business district that is home to major banks, insurance companies, investment firms and the London Stock Exchange. However, for some of its targets, being featured in the Eye was almost a badge of honour – proof they had arrived and become important enough to attract its attention. They could complain, threaten to sue, or act like they didn’t care. But deep down, getting lampooned by Britain’s favourite satirical magazine was a weird, almost kinky badge of honour, ultimate proof that they had finally arrived, even if it meant landing straight in the hall of shame. Furthermore, Hislop’s fame has spread well beyond the Eye through the BBC television satirical news quiz show Have I Got News for You, which first aired in September 1990 and has now been running for 36 years. The show principally pits two teams, captained by Hislop and comedian Paul Merton, against each other to take the mickey out of the week’s headlines, with a guest presenter and celebrity panellists adding to the fun. This circus features politicians and public figures discussing the week’s most awkward news stories, and everyone is fair game, including the studio audience. In all this, Hislop’s dry humour, sharp memory, and talent for breaking through a politician’s carefully rehearsed lines have made him even more of a household name.Yet for all his fame, Hislop does not flaunt the expected celebrity ego: there is no showing off, and he never feels the need to remind anyone who he is. In fact, he is more like someone anyone could grab a pint with at the pub and chat easily to. After 40 years of mercilessly ridiculing and deriding almost everyone and everything, Hislop has successfully avoided the trap of taking himself too seriously.As he famously said of himself – this job certainly doesn’t win you a huge amount of friends, I accept that, but it is very enjoyable, and deep down I think it’s probably quite a worthwhile job.