Royal Biographies and Media Coverage

Page 94, The Private Eye Podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of Page ninety four. My name is Helen Lewis and I'm filling in for Andrew Hunter Murray, who has this week sadly failed develop vetting. I'm in the private i studio with Adam McQueen in his Love and Saba Salman, editor of Rotten Boroughs. The local elections are coming up and it's gonna be a a splintering, I guess, of Britain as people vote against Labour and the Tories where they're still standing. What does the picture look like? Well, let me paint you a little picture. of Sunderland. Come with me as I take you to one of the big reform rallies. That is when Nigel Farage of Reform launched his campaign. So he must be pretty confident of winning it, or that would be qu quite embarrassing. Absolutely. So um I'll just take you to Sunderland with me now. So if you pitch him in Two thousand strong stadium room, big lights, music. to announce all of the speakers and uh a tune that you may not know it's called um Treat Rev Anthem. by an electronica. Producer. Why has Nigel Frage got better taste in music than me? That's yeah. Actually Nigel I was gonna say, coming into Right said Fred. But unfortunately that's my brain has supplied that because Nigel Frage does often sing along to I'm Too Sexy by Right Side Fred. That's right, but you know, small mercy's no Andre Jenkins singing her own tune. So at least that's something. Um so yeah, so in Sunderland he's basically uh banging on about the same thing, which is low tax. Community voices, which is kind of what local councillors do anyway, so not uh difficult uh promise to make. And they don't set the tax. Well Council tax is set at a local level with guidance by government. But I think what's interesting with the reform promises on this, as we've said in Broughton Boroughs, is that a lot of the reform councils have come in and said we're not going to raise taxes, we're going to actually cut taxes. And what's happened is they have raised them, but the way it's being peddled is we've got the lowest raises in the country, therefore we're sort of sticking to our manifesto. So it's a cheeky way of of of retaining that popularity. However, over in um Worcestershire, which we've again covered in the boroughs, uh they've raised their council tax there by nine percent. So there's a again that same thing, the gap between what's being promised and what's actually being delivered. And I've seen for us kind of desperately backpedaling on that and saying, absolutely not, I never I never said taxes would go down. Yes, and I'm not sure. Which point you play in lots of clips of lots of other people's. to be fair to Nigel Farage, but the fact is that, you know, he hasn't actually gone on the record to say, I am not going to be raising council tax. There's a general kind of implication that taxes will be lower across the board. And if you were lucky enough to have one of the uh reform leaflets plop onto your doorstep as I had recently, that's one of the sort of the five commitments. Oh no I did notice if you read the Sunday Times profile of the nineteen year old uh reform council leader. He did manage to fight off everyone else to have a a lower rate of council tax. I want to ask you, can you remember what it is that he keeps in his office? He keeps a bear in his office. An no, no, so he keeps a stuffed bear. I believe it's on loan from the local museum. George Finch. George Finch in is in Warwickshire. I really should clarify on the bear. I thought Teddy Bear. Then I saw the photo. No, it's about five foot tall. It's a taxidermy bear. Yes. The symbol of Warwickshire is a bear, isn't it? Yeah, bear and ragged stuff. Yes, but more importantly, bears are big and buff and scary and I think, you know, for a nineteen year old, uh nothing against young nineteen year olds, uh but That's the image that he wants to portray. It's one of the least convincing things I've heard. Recording this in the centre of cell, I can recommend a couple of pubs if he wants to go on and meet some very big rugged bears. Um and obvious reform is is making that one of their big targets. Is this what we're meant to be looking for, is that reform isn't just Home counties, it's not seaside towns, it is it can make it in the big post industrial north. Yes, exactly that. So I think that one interesting thing is that the amount of candidates um Helen you mentioned that the thousands of people that's standing, reform is fielding candidates in about ninety five percent of seats. and I I went on to the reform website just for research purposes to see what it would take to stand as a as a candidate. And, you know, uh obviously the the nominations have closed now, but before that uh it was very clear they were very, very, very keen for as many candidates, many people as possible. to stand and clearly said, you know, no experience necessary. Which given the state of local government now bankruptcies, pressure on services, you really want somebody in there who knows what they're doing. In Scotland, reform have had five M S P candidates. To withdraw from the ballot. Would you like to guess any of the things that they've done? What are the kind of things you think a reform candidate might do that mean that they have to withdraw? Funny you should say that. Linda Holt called Humzi Youssa, former S P leader an Islamist moron, and many things in that case. Her partner stood down in solidarity with her, which is very Very moving. Any more ideas about why you might have to stand down as a reform candidate? Not as yet. There's two of them who said that they didn't intend to stand and it was an error. That's quite happy. We've stood for parliament by accident. We've got an older by mistake. Uh and then the final one was uh a classic, an old classic, a bit like Bitcoin. Allegations of financial misconduct linked to a Covid bounce back loan. Right, exactly. The old classic. But yeah, whereas um the Greens have had similar troubles. They've had two different people had to withdraw for saying that uh first saying that the gold is green ambulance arson was a false flag, and then one upgraded it saying that the October seventh attacks there on Israel They were also false five, both those had to pull out. So I think that speaks to the fact that I mean you've been covering this about reform. You know, they've got in a lot of warm bodies, but not all of them competent warm bodies. Well also dead bodies. We've had a reform candidate, uh mayoral candidate last year who who'd actually been dead for six months so I mean, you know, um Don't be so a libist. Well there is always there has been this tradition of people who are sort of paper candidates uh who are put forward so that you can show I mean presumably this is the aim of this is that Nigel Farage can say, We've got this enormous slate of candidates, look at you know it's just like and Liz Liz Tross's husband was one of those paper candidates, um For reform. Right, okay, I was gonna say we haven't scoop that. No no no. I think they're captives, aren't they? At the moment, yes. Yes, although she has kind of. I can only assume that Sniger Far is going, No, get away from me, you can't come anywhere there. We'll put up effectively as paper candidates for reform. It did get in and then regretted it and dropped out immediately afterwards. And that is exactly what's happened with reform with the ten uh the ten councils that the reform won last year, uh six hundred and seventy seven councillors and a lot of them have did not expect to actually have to do the job and they've got there and been shopped and have been quite crap. But to go back to the technical terms? It's high jargon. Yes. Yeah. Council responsibility and protection, is it? you know, there are certain things that you you need to do as a counsellor and you know, for example, not breaking the code for conduct is one of them. Turn up is another one. Um yeah, maybe don't, you know, be offensive, um racist, misogynistic might be another. But to go back to the um to the green thing, what's interesting um in terms of vetting is um we've had these problems with reform because of the surge of of the number of candidates. And there's a similar thing going on with the Greens, which again we've talked about in Rotten Boroughs, where I think there's been about fifty defections, I think all from Labour to the Greens across the country. Zack Pelanski has said, almost like don't blame me, because we've got all these people coming, so we can't possibly keep tabs on all of them. That's massively paraphrasing, by the way, in case anyone picks me up on that. But you know, he's he's he's quite assertive in his counter attack. I think is part of the PR drive. But the problem with the green candidates they're putting up is not that they're too green or they're extremistly green, it's that they don't seem to have expressed much interest in the environment over the years, and they're mostly interested in different types of politics. Hamlets, the Lufthan mob. They weren't known. For their aggressive environmental stance, were they? No That wasn't the big thing for them. I I believe that when uh w the many stories that we've run in the eye were not really about their green credentials. No. At all. But I mean these are people who are desperate for power. I don't want to use the word hypnotic uh magnetism of Pelanski, but there's something there, isn't there? We had uh a story recently in Motton Boroughs where there was a a former Tower Hamlet's Labour councillor, uh, also a loyalist uh for Look for Ramand, the the current spire um favourite of the eye. Um and he was booted out because he was supporting the independents. He's recently resurfaced while campaigning on behalf of the independents down in Sour Hamlets, he scooted up to Barking and Dagenham to support one of the New Green Councillors who used to be Labour. who defected to the Greens. Are you with me? You're following? Defected to the Greens defected to the Greens because apparently of the the Labour stance on Gaza. However, he didn't say anything about the Labour Yes, I'm j I'm just mentioning it. Yeah, and I'm not sure. Being elected to local government. No, exactly. But I mean it going back to the vetting thing, it's that thing of him standing there with Zack Polansky brandishing a bright green vote green. I think some people just like to be near something that seems exciting and new and they're like, And that's that is Zac Polanski from the case. They like to photograph it and they like to put it on social media and It's spotted. I just think I mean with with the vetting thing. I was thinking this with all the mantles and stuff in the last week. Should we just throw open the private eye archive to the people? That's all you really need, isn't it? Well actually in the case of little mantels, of course, what you need is someone to just go No it's Peter Mandelson which would have solved an awful lot of problems. But anyway, that's Peter Mandelson. Yeah, and I think that's the thing, you feel that and one level councils have not got a great deal of control over lots of stuff, right? Most of them are burdened by adult social care and that's where the m majority of their budget goes. And there's really that limits their actions. However, if it's stuff like getting your mate up the housing waiting list, then actually there are things as a counselor you can do. Right? The temptations that counsellors feel are often in the sort of nepotism y kind of variety, aren't they? Absolutely. Nepatism backhanders and that's the the the stuff of of Rotten Bars really. But yes, many examples where people have, you know uh being very kind to their chums and help them with, you know, planning or housing. Well talking we now criticised reform and um and the Greens. So let's talk about a really crap labour council and Birmingham. I don't that's that's not unfair, is it? Not all the bins, the bankruptcy and I'm speaking with B But yeah, one of Britain's most bankrupt uh councils. It's the largest in Europe and all the one hundred and one seats are up for election. This is another one that's likely to go into no overall control. which you know we are seeing increasing numbers of this and when I'm not necessarily a bad thing. Well I mean overall control hasn't been great in Birmingham, has it? You would think it would be a positive thing because you then have more local debate, uh you don't have a party political stance. But certainly in all the years that I've been covering local government I've noticed that you know the no overall control thing used to be far more rare because we just had the two, three main parties, uh and now that's being fractured. We are getting councils that are hung, councils that are minority administration, which, you know, may be led nominally by Labour or Lib Dem, but but really it's by a few seats. And that makes it really difficult for decisions to get through, for budgets to be set. Um Everything just becomes harder to find agreement on. So technically it should be better because you're not following party line, that's not an agenda. But the nuts and bolts of getting things done essentially is harder. And it's conspiracy. Presumably getting more difficult because sort of political um views are are splintering more, people are going more to to extremes. I mean we' pot potentially we're going to end up with uh hung councils that are half reform and half green, aren't we? Which is quite hard to see. The conservatives and the Lib Dems always work very, very well together at a level in local government, which I think is why the Lib Dems in twenty ten thought, oh, we could do this in national government, it will go really, really well. Didn't work out for them, spoiler alert. But it's gonna be very, very difficult when people are that that politically opposed. Exactly. And and Birmingham to take that example, I mean I think there's about forty five just uh forty five councils due to exchange uh hands in in in the next elections, May seventh. But to go back to Birmingham, that's an interesting one. So Kenny Bedlock went down to Birmingham and made it known that she would not oppose a conservative reform coalition, locally, not nationally. And Unite the Union, which is obviously involved in the the the the bin strike, so for the last year we've had the strikes um over refuse workers. Unite the Union has had secret talks with reform. Yeah. So it's all kicking off. Is it possible to resolve that dispute? By anyone. I'm just asking it. I c I can't see how. The whole backdrop of um the the row over the bin workers, the there's an equal pay row as well, so some sort of seven hundred odd million. The council declared effective bankruptcy back in twenty twenty three. It's been help by government, so it's got this exceptional financial support so it can borrow It's an absolute dial straight. So that's an example of where I don't know what the solution is to any of those things apart from borrowing more money from government. Right. I I if you can tell me if you were canvassed. I I live in Lewisham. We were canvassed by some very nice Greens who were former Labour people and one of the things they said is we want to end austerity. And I was just like Sounds good, but with what money? Like I don't think the Livestream Council is secretly sitting on a s like smogs pot of gold that they've just been cruelly refusing to disperse up until now. thirty odd councils now have had this hand out from government. But a number of our letter writers make this point, but a hand out from the government to local council is not a handout. It's taxpayers' money being spent in different ways. So uh if central government Underfund councils, which is a criticism, then councils borrow from them. They're not they're not exactly begging, are they? They're they're trying to find a a restitution of some balance um between the two types of taxpayers. That's right. And and while all that's going on, the pressure to provide those adult social care services and support and how all of that's still continuing. So really it's a it's a pretty difficult picture out there. There was a big narrative I remember from the last lot of local elections, which was all we're gonna come in and we're gonna cut waste and we're gonna cut DEI initiatives and all that kind of thing. And the experience once people got into power was seemed to be that actually well you can do a bit of that, but it the sort of sums of money are are are are fractional. Not to say that there isn't waste in local government, of course there is. You you write about it constantly in in in in your column. But they're fractional compared with the actual the adult social care budget and all those kind of big things. Has that has that sort of gone away as a narrative now? Or are people still pushing there is there is some money down the back of the sofa? I think a certain reform councils are still peddling that myth of massive inefficiency. Well take down the progress back move over the town hall and that's a hundred million pounds. You know, you have a statutory duty to look after people in your area who need support and that costs money. People are living longer, people need social care. That is your responsibility. Uh, you know, taking down the flag, it's not gonna bring the sums that you think it's going to bring. Um and so therefore you have to raise Council tax. And a lot of the problems that your column um exposes are council think we haven't got any money. Here's an idea, usually involving outsourcing something or investing in some traditionally council activity. We go in with the private sector and it all goes wrong. Absolutely. Yeah, going with the private sector, uh whether that's through housing or schools. Um I mean housing is another one that we've we've covered a huge amount where a lot of councils are uh l or were launching um their own housing companies or regeneration companies and playing at being private sector players. Uh and it's gone absolutely ticks up. And they claim this is desperation that they have to do this. I mean obviously we're not buying that 'cause we're right about it. But that's pressure from um having no other sources of income, presumably. Yes, that's from raising the It is, and it's and it's I think you know what what people often forget successive governments have cut back. on these main areas that that councils have to so while the the responsibility is still there, the supply of the cash that's gonna m help them meet that responsibility is is year on year shrinking. I think one thing actually in some of these cases with the housing companies and the regeneration companies that are launched I think it's not just about money. Um I think we've proved it's also about the glitz and the glamour of of rubbing shoulders with the big developers and you know, going to conferences abroad that uh one of my biggest groans during this campaigning season was uh a Davy leader of the Lib Dem saying that he wants to impose a duty on every new Um housing development to have a G P surgery. And it was just like yes, what we should do is just put one more restriction on house building. That's that's the challenge. Is there a bit of a problem as well in the health sector with GP's uh supply and hours and and also one of the things is that every new development is often subject to like judicial review and then planning appeals. So if you're building that G if you're a G P do you want to move into somewhere that in three years time there might be some houses there, or depending whether or not the residents have taken it all the way to the High Court. No, in fact there won't be. Or they've you know they found a newt Well no the residents' blood pressure will have gone up so much that you will have quite a few kind of patients coming in as a result of that. Um on the no overall control thing, so there are currently thirty two councils outside London that are no overall control. Sam Friedman in a very good sub stack about the local elections said he thinks there's probably gonna be another another thirty two outside London at the end of this. So That's really the story of these elections, isn't it? It's like we hate the mainstream. If you still got a Tory council you're gonna register that you hate them. But mostly if you've got a labour council you're going to register that you hate them. fracture is really interesting. You know, on one hand you've got Labour and Tory uh local candidates distancing themselves, but over here you've got reform and the Greens bigging up the the culture personality with Pelanski and and Farage. So it's really interesting. And over in Durham we talked about Durham earlier. Um you know, they've got a life size cardboard cut out of Nigel Farage in their reform meeting room, which they cut off to the to the uh the main council chamber. Um so I think they must have been really excited when they had the rally in Sunderland because they had the real guy there. That's tragic. It's like Donald Trump is hoping for gold statues and but Britain being Britain with gold statues. What slightly retrofactor It was on the wireless. They sent a pigeon individually to each Scottish pictures home with the results of who'd won. Tragically not, although that would be charming. Uh they're all men. It's been a big turnabout in Scottish politics from the Halcyon days of Kezia, Dugdale, Rude Davidson, Nicola Sturgeon having three main parties. The chapocracy is returned to Scotland. Joanna Cherry, former S P MP, has left the S P in fairly spectacular fashion with a book coming out, um, Keeping the Dream Alive, which details her fall out with Nicola Sturgeon and the party. What did she claim that the S P wanted to melt down? In twenty eighteen. Was it their gold reserves? It was a bust of Alex Salmon. Yeah, she says that uh the the party was only too keen to move on from the Alex Amanda era when he's sorry, I was still with the it wasn't a gold bust of Alexander. I'm still thinking about John. Some sort of barnet forming and redesigned. Before they decided they didn't. They do have an amazing ability to fall out with each other horribly at the top of the S and P don't they? But are they going to get in again? They'll be the largest party, I think, on the predictions. Yes. I don't who So well, as previously discussed, reform have had a bit of a mare. Their leader made a very unpleasant homophobic joke about George Michael, a like a rugby club dinner. A phrase that always is too strong even for the rugby club dinner, apparently guests in the room, which is saying that's quite a high tolerance for these things and I read it and I went ooh no, I don't think so. So they've and they've had the many candidates withdraw, their press officer has um stepped down, so they are still in the slightly like the basket case organisational stage. That's gonna um you know, that's gonna count against them. So yeah, even though the S and P have been in government for an incredibly long time, luckily Fresh face John Swinney, the uh current and former First Minister. What does he want to do to chickens? Reduce their cost. How does he want to make it a little bit more than the voice of referendum about sixteen year olds and chickens. That's the way to get above sixty percent it's me. He wants a price cap on various sort of basics across all supermarkets, doesn't he? He does. He wants a a series of essential items. Milk, eggs, cheese, I saw. The problem with that one, surely, is that who does the cost get passed on to? 'Cause I mean already you've got dairy farmers and and and and egg farmers in pretty perilous position because they've been beaten down by the supermarkets. You've got a very, very big farming constituency in Scotland. I would say that's causing you problems. I was I was in Strana the other week outside the Caledonian cheese company, makers of uh seriously strong cheddar. Yeah, I think that's It's seriously strong. No, it's just every supermarket you go to in Britain. And bizarre, in Scotland they they they they dye it orange for no apparent reason. Wow. And if you ask them why do you dye your cheddar orange, then no one knows. It's just a bizarre. What's the what about the impact on smaller shops then? Because it that that's supermarkets, isn't it? Yeah, I need the big shops. Yeah. I'm just gonna be crude here and say it doesn't make sense. You can't you can't I he doesn't have the power to do he can't he's not a commissar, he doesn't do price controls. It would in any case the supermarkets work on very thin margins. You can't have like corner shops now being mended, so he wouldn't they would be excluded. Well they would lose out massively. You see all the the supermarket advertising, which uh uh along with betting is the only thing that's propping up print newspapers at the moment. All of their adverts at the moment were arm our might is cheap than Aldi's. You know, they are all competing right there, so the kind of um profits to be made on it are uh tiny margins, anyway. Definitely. My local supermarket a couple of years ago was giving away chickens. Dead ones, obviously. That's very becoming much less interesting. But this is part of your theory, Helen, that um the voter must be bailed out at all costs. So if there is a cost of living crisis, then food will have to be subsidised. It it's sort of everything now, isn't it? It's the problem. between minimum wage, which is now about twenty two, twenty three thousand, and then there's a huge chunk of the economy that's just all around there and then very few people in the in the higher bands. So instead of making it so that people are getting higher wages per hour, let's try and find ways to give them money. Which is you know, things things like the energy price cap. Um it become very popular. But giving away money as a an electoral um uh strategy used to be a bit of a joke. But it isn't. But it is. Cheap chicken. Okay, let's do whales very quickly. I've got a question for you. Who characterised the Senate elections as a choice between Well I think you've made a very cruel assertion there about uh Rin up your worth and need to apply Cumry. That's how he framed it. But the reason I mention this is that his final Binaries it's not X, it's Y, which I grant you as a little chat GPT. Was ply cumrial reform. That's how he's fighting that election. It's Well there isn't anyone else in in Wales anymore. I mean that's gonna be a really interesting one to watch. In in terms of psychologically for Labour losing Wales would be a big deal. Alina Morgan, their leader there, has said she would work with Plyde. So they may find a way if they are the first and second largest parties. But it also illustrates something that's been a theme of what we've been talking about, which is there are now two blocks in British politics and people can circulate f between Labour, S and P, Plyde, the Greens, that's a left bloc, and then the Tories and Reform Categorise the right bloc, and they're cannibalizing each other's votes. Oh yeah, sorry to standing no, they're not going to be able to standing any candidates but what they are doing is backing uh great Yarmouth first. Um so Rupert Lowe, founder of Restore, that's his constituency. Um and so Britons are just gonna do it in great Yarmouth, it's more manageable. This is gonna work. Make Yarmouth great. Great again, exactly, exactly. And uh the last I looked, uh he been uh promising uh to put up the five pound membership fee for the first five hundred, I believe it was, uh members of Great Yarmouth first. Well, if you need any more great Yarmouth news then uh Sabers Column is the place to check out. I'm now I've made that commitment on your behalf. Sorry about that. This week would have been the Queen's Hundredth birthday. And whenever I hear um an occasion like that, I think, Adam, is there a quiz to be had? It may well be. It's of course only her um unofficial hundredth birthday. Because the Queen has two birthdays. Two cakes, two lots of presents. She's got the Troop in the colour, isn't it? Is it June the seventh, I think? I think Charles has now inherited as n as now the King's official birthday. As well. Which is just inheritable. Clarify, she she isn't actually 100 though, is she? 'Cause she's died. No, she has been dead for for for the last few of those years. But never I've been reading the papers and there's at least twenty seven new um biographies out and I just um none of them make it entirely clear. Well actually as we've been on air and it's been revealed that she is still alive. Oh good. And she's here now And she's standing for witch council. Up against Paddington. No, I think it's interesting actually I mean because we're now it's now for what four years since uh since Innocent the Queen died and I have really, really noticed a kind of change in tone of the kind of coverage which a lot of which has come through. We had the announcement this week that the official biography is going to be written. Uh a historian has been appointed that a historian who originally wrote uh uh the best known for the book she wrote about the the interregnum, the uh the the time when Cromwell was in charge, which is quite an interesting Anna K, that's the right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um which is gonna be the really interesting one because she presumably will get access to all of those papers that otherwise remain, um locked up in the bowels of Windsor uh of Windsor Castle with the uh uh uh the the the Thames Valley police kinda saying, Well could we have a look at them 'cause there's some stuff in there about Prince Andrew. Maybe she'll get access to them first. It'll be a bit of a race. But also there's a big Robert Hardman, um uh how many royal books as Robert Harding written by But this with this one apparently is you know his new his new take on the Queen. And there is a bit of a new take going on. I've two things I've really, really noticed in in in in royal coverage, just in the last few weeks, is there suddenly seemed to be a moment where The columnist decided that Beatrice and Eugenie were up for being criticised. They've it's always been a case of, you know, you can say whatever you want about Andrew, whatever you want about Fergie, but the the t the two princesses, you know, they they shouldn't be blamed for whatever their parents had done. And there seemed to be literally one week where suddenly Jan Moyer and um uh Janice Turner noticed that Eugenie had had one of those charities that has lots of big fundraising galax, but doesn't seem to actually give out very much money to what you might term people who need it. Yes, yeah, and effective wro I think I wrote a column that says it was the headline was something like just pull your finger out you or something, wasn't it? Which was a sort of different tenor of o of royal coverage, really. But the other thing that I've noticed, particularly and I think it's this is about these new biographies, is that there is now a willingness to criticise the Queen for her role in bringing up Andrew and making him the man that he is. in a way that's would have been completely unthinkable directly after her death, when it was very much kind of like sort of veneration and and and and and and a long, long long life of service and no criticism whatsoever. So there is a kind of um change in in that. And I think it's really interesting. I'm just looking so I'm writing a book at the moment which is set in nineteen ninety three at the the height of the war of the whales is and the the difference Even with everything Ben saying about Andrew now, is the the tone of royal reporting then was I mean, this was the point where we were getting sort of royal phone calls recorded and turning up with um you know, w Charles' mistress. And and Squidgey, who was a who was uh Diana's gentleman friend as well. Which is There was this extraordinary sort of free for all in the tabloids for a while then. Then when Princess Diana died, it sort of flipped back in and you had that younger generation and very much a feeling that the the the the intrusion into um Harry and and William's life was was was was completely unacceptable. And I just think it's sort of slightly starting to swing back in this other direction. I think it's interesting as well, as you always have to look. who's steering the stories and what's going on there. And of course, you know, there was always uh as as Flunky chronicled in the pages of Private Eye, a big battle between um Prince Charles as he then was in his kind of press operation, which was run very, very separately from the Buckingham Palace press operation. And I don't think I mean I think there might be some helpful spin doctrine going on in the king who really does seem to wash his hands entirely of his little brother, uh and just kind of pushing things in the direction of um well, I mean you you you did this in in in in the eye quite recently in uh it's not Sylvia Crine anymore, it's dame dame Dame Head of Shoulders. Dame headed shoulders. Much, much younger and more um with it. Novelist. But uh you know, the the the point that uh Charles actually probably has a few resentments from childhood which are which are kind of coming out now in in a kind of public forum. Entitled is very good on that, the uh Andrew Lowney book about the fact that Andrew was the kind of favourite sign. His nickname from his mother was Baby Grumpling. Which is really I I think that's really cute, but I can see it maybe turned him into a Maybe crumplings from the Parishes, which was a cartoon strip in the Daily Mirror back in the sixties. I never had Dan as a mirror reader. Oh, she was a lifelong socialist. Exactly, he's lost that privilege. I mean what more can they take away from him? It's the final straw, isn't it? ended up saying that um One of the few people who'd spotted that Mandelson was up to no good. was the king. I thought that must have been unhappy reading for Cyr. You're you're less in touch with what's going on than the King. Well he specifically said that that Mandelson and and and and the King were quite good mates at one point in the sort of nineties, but even his Majesty spotted that after the first resignation maybe this was a slightly dubious person to be hanging around with, and the second kind of gr definitely uh conc uh made that concrete for him. But um There you go, once again, develop vetting. Should have had a word. Yep. Yep. There we go. All right, um what we haven't got is buzzers here. So I'm gonna give you each a sound so you can jump in. Ellen, I would like you to give when you know when you know the answer, um, a a Herald's trumpet. Perfect. Thank you. Good. Saba, can we have a loyal hooray from you? No, come on. Oh yeah, that's perfect. Ian, if your buzzer sound can be a a a fervent God bless your mom. D delivered it in the in the in the What Dick Van Dyke full Purley King Yeah. Absolutely. So question one. Come in when you know the answer with your with your appropriate noise. The Queen spoke the first ever photo bubble on a private eye cover in issue five. Or at least the speech bubble was coming out of the Royal State coach, so we're assuming it was her. What was the occasion? And I couldn't. Go on then. It was the birth of Prince Charles and she was on the way to the hospital. You're a few years too late. Birth of Prince Edward comes not shortly afterwards, but Charles has been around. Charles is actually thirteen. But I'm gonna give you half a point because he was in hospital. He was having an emergency appendectomy. And the uh the speech bobber coming out of the royal coach was saying, Great Warman Street James and step on it. Uh but yes, yeah, um the coverage of uh Prince Edward's birth uh a bit later on in nineteen sixty three, and uh Princess Anne starting at Bennington as well. It just gives you an idea of how long Private Eye has been going. We were covering the royal children who are now uh grandparents. It's extraordinary. Number two, one of the earliest bits of journalism in the Eye, uh because the jokes came first in Private Eye, the journalism sort of joined a few years later in the nineteen sixties. Uh one of the first bits of journalism appeared, however, was in November nineteen sixty four, and it wasn't the I's own journalism. Instead Which air again? Nineteen. Good bless you, Mom. Go on, sir. Was it profumo? Uh no, it's this is post profumo. Uh it's it's a little bit vague. Was it one involving ships? Quite often they involve ships or helicopters. Uh no, not this one particular. There was a lot of stuff about Prince Philip uh flying helicopters and how safe he was. Yeah. No, not that I' ne never that safe behind the wheel of a car either. Um Saba, do you want to come in with a wild gas? Shall I just do the Prince Philip. Yeah. That was that was quite frightening, actually. Was it something to do with some with one of the rules going out with someone who wasn't It was implications that he was um well let me give you the translations that were provided from the French papers. He was To be fair. on a royal trip to Mexico by himself at that point. It wasn't that he'd just kind of laid down the wrong and he stormed out and gone all the way to Mexico. Uh it was a solo nine day tour. Um uh but um according to the French press, as reported at this point in Private I in nineteen sixty four, uh Elizabeth was toujours triste. Toujours so. Always alone, always sad. Uh, she cannot go on. She has decided to support no more of it in future. She's on the edge of a nervous breakdown on the brink of the abyss. She is no longer our proud and haught queen. She did manage to carry on for several decades after that. And uh in the party has been a little bit more than always been good on the royals. Well it's a bit like do you do you remember the um uh the National Enquirer? for ages, for about ten years just kept running running a headline that just said Queen Elizabeth at death's door. Which is one of those headlines that eventually was gonna be true, and eventually was, of course, in twenty twenty two. Can I just give you the last tiny beautiful detail from this. Apparently, according to the French press. Uh the Queen was haunted by plaintive inquiries of her little Prince Andrew, naively asking, Tell me, mamma, is it Mexico that Papa is? There you go. I think he lost something in translation. Something about royal reporting that encourages total nonsense. Yes. Make it up and I'm gonna deny it. Number three, the big one. Who named the Queen Brenda? Up. I'm gonna go Willie Rushton 'cause he feels like he did a lot of naming. Uh not w not Willie Rushton, no. Was it Prince Philip? Uh God bless you, sir. No, it wasn't um and it wasn't Private Eye, even though we've been we've adopted the name and have been using it ever since. According to the Grovel Column, which was kind of a sort of weird society column that the the the Private Eye ran in the seventies. Ninete one uh it reported that it was a nickname used by her immediate staff. So actually a genuine nickname Within the Palace, which was then uh adopted by Private I. Uh, a few years later, um they added a couple of others. Uh the obvious one. Prince Charles Brian, now known as Brian, still known as Brian. Still confusing people online when every anyone puts any of our stories up on my lips. Who is Brian? What is this? He's the king. Uh we also had uh Princess Margaret. Anyone want to guess what she was known as? Yvonne. Oh, very, very good. Yeah, I've been reading past issues. And can you remember what the nickname uh Courtiers gave to Diana when she joined the royal family in nineteen eighty one was? Believe it to be Cheryl, or is it Cheryl? You've been cheating. You knew this quiz was coming up. I just did a little like she's just a royal. In in twenty eighteen, Flunke revealed the the nickname for uh Harry and Megan within the royal household. Can you remember that one? I'm just going through famous two things. I'm like I've got certain benefit. No, no, no. Is it cautionbacks? No, that would be quite good one as well. Chandler and Monica on the grounds that he was a bit weird and married someone much hotter than him with very, very firm ideas. That's actually that's not bad. I think it lost out because H M works as well. You know, they're sort of nice high speed clothes. H bombs. Charlotte Griffiths has come back into the room. Reprise the last of the podcast were rather. Rather confused because it was so realistic, the rendering of the transcript, they thought we'd hired Prince Harry and Charlotte Griffiths to come and do this podcast. Sadly we can afford Prince Harry, but we can't afford Charlotte Griffiths she charges far too much. Okay, in March twenty sixteen, when Michael Gove was forced to deny being the source of a claim that ended up on the front page of The Sun. as the headline, Queen Backs Brexit. The I ran a cover of Her Majesty at the state opening parliament facing a ro row of officials, including Michael Gove, Just point to the person who did it, your majesty. What special news did we receive via Palace back channels after that cover came out? Presume she loved it. She had it put in a little box that she used to get and w watch neighbours and read. She absolutely did, yes, yeah. Um this this this this this message in full which came came through to us. The front cover of the current eye was included in the cuttings sent up to the Queen at most days. didn't return, which usually means that it made it into her personal scrapbook. She collects cartoons and send ups, even the unkind ones, if she finds them funny. So there you go. Got a fanny and. Well, just like George the Third. Did he have a personal scrapbook of private eye covers? Um he did. It was some of our first issues. He bought a lot of of cartoons of himself and his song. He did, yes. He had a very collection. He rather liked being called Farmer George, didn't he? He did because he was he was not unlike the present king in that he was very interested in agriculture when everyone else thought it was boring. I like the idea of the Queen being a s some kind of supereditor of private art. She's got her own versions in her scrapbook. With only the good ones. All about her. Not much about Andrew, though. Probably lots about Andrew and hardly anything about Charles, I should think. Well this is what we'll find out from the official biography, presumably. So I'm going to be allowed to look in that scrapbook and confirm that this is true. But the Brexit story has appeared in the hard hasn't it? Yeah, and is also being um countermanded now. We ran recently uh the spectator ran a piece saying she was spectator edited by Michael Gove ran a piece saying uh she was actually extremely anti Brexit and pro Europe. Well she was anti Scottish referendum, if you remember, David Cameron said she purred down the phone to him when she found out the union had held together. So but I remember when I used to do a podcast with Stephen Bush now at the F T, he pointed that demographically she was a white pensioner without a college degree. That says Brexit. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of relatives from the continent though. So um she had some your own. But a lot of people in Spain as expats waiting for Brexit, so the fact that the thing is. But then she wore the blue and yellow outfit. Yeah, for Ukraine there was that. Oh no that was. That was the one with the um with the stars. Which I think is definitive. Right. Face clothes. There is one more question, uh which I suspect uh Ian might get ahead of the the the other two of you. Rigged. We'll go with in the same year, an even better cover in July of new Prime Minister Theresa May doing the most extraordinarily low curtsy almost all the way down to the floor. As the Queen said to her, How low can you go? And Theresa May replied, I've appointed Boris Johnson as foreign secretary. Whose joke was that, Ian? Who wrote that one? Ian, whose joke was it really? Sheila's. Yes. Was this the one occasion where the managing director of Private Eye has given this is the joke for the cover? Yes, and it was very annoying because it was incredibly funny. It's a great job. And um Shirley was essentially uh the managing director of Prive Die for about three hundred years since George the Third. And her job was to try and keep this thing afloat, not to provide better jokes than me. Well her involvement on covers usually was come down and see what you're putting on on Monday and go Oh, not the Prime Minister again. That's ten thousand sales we've lost. But not on this occasion. No. No, she hit the jackpot. Right. Brilliant. Well, um as a result of that, I can uh reveal that um Helen uh gets the regal nod of approval, the sword on both shoulders, and um whatever medal you would like to take home with you. Yeah. I don't think I've ever won a private iquiz before. This is very exciting to me. I know, we just felt sorry for you. Ian got far more questions right than you. But it's just traditional always loses on the telly. Finally the rigging works in my favour. Well, that is it for this episode of page ninety four. We'll be back in a fortnight. Uh with another one. possibly involving Andy. Until then, thank you to Saba, Adam and Ian. And thank you to you for listening. If you'd like to get more jokes, stories, pictures of the Queen Actually probably not pictures of the Queen anymore. Maybe a small mate. Then uh please subscribe to Private Eye by going to private hyphen i dot co dot UK. If you'd like to subscribe, that would be great. If you'd like to buy the newsagents, also great. The only remaining thanks go to Matt Hill at Rethink Audio for producing.