Talk:Private Eye

Brenda
If memory serves, "Brenda" was the codename for the Queen used by her bodyguards, so anyone listening in on their radio chatter wouldn't guess who they were talking about. Sophie Wilder  03:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

My understanding is that it stemmed from the fly-on-the-wall and somewhat arslikan documentary "The Royal Family" in 1969, showing the royals as just like any other family (just with a bit more money, titles, access to the better things in life...). Private Eye then decided to give the older royals "ordinary" names, so the queen became Brenda, Princess Margaret became Yvonne, Prince Philip became Keith and Prince Chulls became Brian. It's usually only Brenda who gets a mention as such these days as her son and heir presumably generates more humour under his own name. Ibiwisi666 (talk) 11:47, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Colemanballs/Commentatorballs
Just a note that Colemanballs was renamed Commentatorballs some years ago.

Other features possibly worth a mention are Dumb Britain (some of the more bizarre answers on quiz shows) and From The Message Boards, supposedly mirroring certain message boards' contents with unnerving accuracy. Ibiwisi666 (talk) 11:53, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Any chance of replacing the private eye picture with a picture of Peter Cook dressed as a Sherlock Holmes type?
Like this one?

I feel like it's more appropriate, given he started the damn thing.
 * He didn't start it. He financed it after about the third or fourth edition (can't be arsed to look it up) before that it was a guy called Osmond who financed it and Ingrams who edited. I used to have v a whole load of '60s editions but no longer. Scream!! (talk) 22:29, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Needs more balance
This article has multiple issues and is heavily slanted.

For one, during the Covid crisis, the nagazine has been far too apologetic for the government's & international response to the point of docility. They have covered some corruption especially in the sourcing of PPE, but they have not criticised economic discrimination during lockdown. And while MMR vaccines are one thing, I can't recall them discussing any of the side effects or deaths resulting from Covid shots.

Also editor Ian Hislop is heavily misrepresented here. The article suggests he is highly conservative. In actual fact Private Eye contains a lot of left-wing advertising. The T-shirt company Red Molotov advertises in there on a regular basis (the name says it all). The magazine also regularly attacks the Conservative Party in general. Hislop himself has been on the BBC "Have I got News for You" for nearly thirty years - today's BBC is a pretty left-wing environment (royal family aside).

The article gives the impreasion it is a right-wing publication which is questionable.-Albannach (talk) 10:56, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * ive made changes to the stuff about james goldsmith that was far too fawning over PI and not supported. it took a fucking age going through news reports and archives of dozens of hesaid/shesaid legal proceedings and i dunno if we even needed that bit with as much detail, but as i said, it was so fawning as it was and i wanted to reflect something a bit more balanced.


 * Also max mosley might have a bit racist when he was 21 (he was 81 when 'revelations' broke, dead now.) no shit sherlock. his dad was the face of british facism and he helped his dad with his campaign. no shit you can dig up some unsavoury associations from when he still a kid and under sway of his father. they campaign leaflet is not a surprise and doesnt invalidate leaveson, or mosleys testimony. its sour grapes from PI here and there is no need to spoon feed us mosleys history and family relations, which was already well known with the implications of associated racism when he was 21 has no baring but illicits knee jerk reactions. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:13, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * with hislop, who cares what kind of conversative he is if he is one at all. show me his positions on whatever issues are relevent to the article. we get better idea of his character and its implications. instead we apply a label that tells me nothing useful but preconceived notions or why someone opted for that label. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:29, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I added a ref to Media Bias/Fact Check which says the Eye is left-center, although personally I'd rate it more centrist. Hislop is certainly no friend of the Labour Party, whether Blair and Brown or Corbyn. Speaking of Hislop, there are plenty of media sources discussing his beliefs and opinions, on issues such as the Royal Family and religion (the Royal Family is covered a lot in the Eye, and there is quite a lot on C of E internal politics too), as well as on politics and his vendettas with the likes of Piers Morgan. It seems reasonable to reference these, even if the magazine isn't entirely his work, but the article should distinguish his media work (such as HIGNFY) more clearly from the magazine.
 * The article also needs more coverage on its investigative reporting, such as the work of Paul Foot and campaigns on Deepcut Barracks, Post Office IT issues sending subpostmasters to jail, etc; it barely mentions this at all except for MMR. --Annanoon (talk) 11:00, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * im not really familiar enough with private eye to do more than nitpick. if someone creates content ill can nitpick for the greater good. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:21, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

transphobia
the transphobia section is...problematic. the sources do not directly reference the claims made, but tweets of a 'private eye support x, y, z' or 'they are are not sufficiently outraged about something'. i cannot see the context of what was actually said, im not paying for back issues to if claims are as clear cut as the very angry tweets angrily insist. its a very emotive subject for folk that make an objective appraisal of PI's position questionable. it might be all fair and accurate, its difficult to say from the sources that i can actually see. AMassiveGay (talk) 17:08, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * reviewing the references, this section just does not make the case. removing AMassiveGay (talk) 12:01, 20 January 2022 (UTC)