And for the large part it avoided the pitfalls of moving online. Current issue: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/current-issue
Ian Hislop is a national treasure and his evidence to the select committee on press intrusion was both erudite and hilarious.
The News Quiz is still a R4 show so transition would perhaps be the wrong word. Extension, assuming they have the same source as you imply with your comment.
He couldn’t keep it in his pants, so was ridiculed by the guests (including Hislop)
That led to him resigning
Which led to Boris Johnson hosting a few episodes
A charismatic buffoon, that catapulted him to wider attention
He was then selected for London mayor
During the 2012 Olympics he was pushed further into the world’s eye
That led to him being a key role one way or another in brexit. He flipped a coin and backed Leave.
That backing tipped the scales and road to leave
That eventually led to him becoming PM, after a lucky backstabbing by Gove in 2017, meaning he managed to get a large majority in 2019
It’s an interesting example of the butterfly effect.
The tactics that won brexit with vote leave were used later to elect trump.
It amuses me to think how the world can change from tiny changes
And it’s quite funny.
I can't think of any other UK publication that comes close.
It does have its own unique culture you'd need to spin up on to really grok what's going on. For example it just calls the Queen "Brenda", and various government agencies get more apposite names like the "Fundamentally Supine Agency". And there are a lot of running jokes after existing for so long.
Hislop and before him Cook are actual real people trying to do something good instead of just attempting to get rich for the sake of it before dropping dead.
There are lots of in jokes and also "code phrases", such as "tired and emotional" == drunk, more here [1].
I used to subscribe to it but cancelled it after I left the UK.
The UK press are an absolute disaster. Most are partisan, including:
Telegraph: torygraph Daily mail: torygraph FT: bankers times Guardian: with you until you need actual help then it's back to mi5 Sun/Times: Murdoch incorporated
Private eye is literally carry everything on their shoulders. There is nothing else.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_themes_and_in-jokes_...
If you're curious about it details are on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation
(this says a lot about the poor state of media in general).
> Even when an error does not end up in the law courts, it can still prove embarrassing. The magazine was at the forefront of challenging the MMR triple vaccine - devoting a special-edition pamphlet to the subject. A defiant Hislop insists that the Eye was right to raise the questions it did and to defend the reputation of Andrew Wakefield, the controversial doctor who first suggested there might be a link between MMR, autism and bowel disease - a theory ruled out by the latest comprehensive review of evidence. "There's nothing there that I don't think is right. We came into the story about the hounding of Wakefield and the idea that he wasn't a bona fide doctor, who'd done a huge amount of good looking after these children - the parents certainly bear witness to that. All his stuff beforehand was peer-reviewed and no one said, 'This man's a lunatic' about the link between bowel disease and autism. The work he's still doing is still perfectly OK. I don't accept the claim, 'You added to a climate of hysteria, which means herd immunity will go down and therefore it's all your fault.' I think the questions we asked at the time were acceptable to ask."
That leaflet was published in 2002, when the science was pretty clear. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123186/
Private Eye is available in audio form through the RNIB, though it may just be a digest version as it looks like it's part of a weekly compilation from various publications.