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The following is a list of regularly appearing mini-sections appearing in the British satirical magazine Private Eye . These are mostly based on clippings from newspapers sent in by readers, often for a cash fee.
A column giving examples of especially convoluted and impenetrable jargon from the BBC. Named after former Director-General of the BBC John Birt, who was particularly associated with that kind of language. Following his departure, extracts are almost always taken from BBC job adverts or press releases announcing senior BBC appointments. The column features an illustration of a Dalek, a reference to Dennis Potter's 1993 James MacTaggart Memorial lecture where he described Birt (alongside Marmaduke Hussey) as a "croak-voiced Dalek".
A collection of gaffes from radio and TV perpetrated by sports commentators and sportsmen, featuring inconsistencies, mixed metaphors, or otherwise ludicrous statements, such as "he's missed the goal by literally a million miles" or "if they played like this every week they wouldn't be so inconsistent". This feature was originally called Colemanballs and specialised in quotes from British sports commentator David Coleman, but expanded to quotes from others, notably including Murray Walker. The name of this feature has since spawned derivative collections such as "Warballs" (spurious references to the September 11 attacks), "Dianaballs" (unduly sentimental references to Diana, Princess of Wales). Any other subject can be covered, as long as it is appropriately suffixed by -balls, such as Tsunamiballs .
Bizarre, ignorant or otherwise humorous answers to questions given by contestants on British television and radio quiz shows, compiled by Marcus Berkmann. Occasionally, Dumb America, Dumb Ireland, Dumb Australia and other countries are also featured.
Pictures sent in by readers showing contradictory, ironic, amusing, scatological, or otherwise amusing images. For example, a temporary "Polling Station" sign situated next to a "Do not sit on the fence" notice, and an Indonesian restaurant named "Caffe Bog".
Highlighting the often unnecessary use by rolling news programmes of outside broadcasts, where reporters speak to camera simply as an alternative to broadcasting a studio-based commentary, even if they have no new insight to offer from the scene.
An occasional series devoted to unusual callousness in public, such as a former neighbour of Jill Dando remarking that, "the shooting left a horrible atmosphere here for a while. It made you aware of all the terrible things that go on. But I don't think it has affected house prices."
A spot highlighting contradictions or hypocrisy in pairs of statements from individuals or newspapers.
The letters page usually features a submission comparing two famous individuals who look alike; frequently the two have an ironic connection too which is pointed out by the reader who submits the piece. The captions relating to the two individuals are invariably swapped around, implying that even the magazine cannot tell which individual is which. The sender often finishes with the phrase "might they perhaps be related?" and/or "I think we should be told." This feature was copied by the American Spy magazine in its "Separated at Birth?" section.
On one occasion, Robert Maxwell successfully sued the Eye for printing a made-up letter 'lookaliking' him with one of the Kray twins. Although the comparison was deemed an artistic interpretation and not amenable at law, the facts that (a) the letter had been composed by Richard Ingrams and (b) that the magazine often hinted (correctly, as it turned out) that Maxwell was a crook, were taken as proof of defamatory intent.[ citation needed ]
Reader-submitted feature listing humorously pretentious quotations from actors and other theatrical celebrities. The term "luvvie" pre-dates the magazine as a derogatory noun for pretentious, overblown, narcissistic people of an artistic or dramatic bent.[ citation needed ] The column was briefly renamed Trevvies for several issues in the mid-1990s after Trevor Nunn described use of the term as offensive “as calling a black man a ‘nigger’”. [1]
Examples of journalists employing the cliché "x is the new y", e.g. "Black is the new brown" or "Basel is the new St Tropez". Even after a recent trend for certain journalists to preface their remarks with "At the risk of appearing in Private Eye ...", remarks of this kind have not prevented many such journalists from receiving entries in the column, and Ian Hislop, editor of the Eye, was quoted himself in one issue.
Quoting amusing misprints from newspapers or unintentionally funny examples of journalism, this section appears throughout the magazine. These often feature misprinted TV guides, such as a programme called "It Came from Outer Space" being illustrated by a picture of David Cameron speaking in the House of Commons. Frequent inclusion in this section gave The Guardian a reputation for common typographical errors, earning it the nickname The Grauniad. The domains www.grauniad.com and www.grauniad.co.uk redirect to The Guardian's website at www.theguardian.com.
Comparing numerical figures relating to a current event with others that make the event seem comical, bizarre, irrelevant or despicable.
Subtitled "with meaningful and viable scenarios at this moment in time". Recording the nonsense rampant in "on the spot" interviews beginning in the 1970s, as television news coverage went live outside the studio, leading to unrehearsed speeches which naturally tended toward currently fashionable clichés (for example, instead of "there is a siege", "we have an ongoing siege situation").
Highlighting the behaviour of those who have allegedly been sycophantic to those in authority, particularly in media and politics, such as Phil Hall, former editor of the News of the World (owned by Rupert Murdoch) declaring Rupert Murdoch "the world's greatest living journalist."
A sub-section of the letters page devoted to pedantic corrections of or additions to previous articles or readers' letters. Under its previous title, 'Pedants Corner', this included several letters on the use of the apostrophe in "Pedants'", which has variously appeared as "Pedants", "Pedant's" or "Ped'ants Corner". It was renamed "Pedantry Corner" in 2008 following a reader’s suggestion.
Listing pretentious, pseudo-intellectual quotations from the media. At various times different columnists have been frequent entrants, with varied reactions. In the 1970s, Pamela Vandyke Price, a Sunday Times wine columnist, wrote to the magazine complaining that "every time I describe a wine as anything other than red or white, dry or wet, I wind up in Pseud's Corner". [2]
Instances of companies adopting an unimaginative buzzword by claiming to provide 'solutions' where a simpler phrasing would seem more appropriate, such as describing cardboard boxes as "Christmas Ornament Storage Solutions".
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of extremely xenophobic mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. They were conceived by writer Terry Nation and first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, in casings designed by Raymond Cusick.
In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas, also known informally as quotes, talking marks, speech marks, quote marks, quotemarks or speechmarks, are punctuation marks placed on either side of a word or phrase in order to identify it as a quotation, direct speech or a literal title or name. Quotation marks may be used to indicate that the meaning of the word or phrase they surround should be taken to be different from that typically associated with it, and are often used in this way to express irony. They are also sometimes used to emphasise a word or phrase, although this is usually considered incorrect.
News style, journalistic style, or news-writing style is the prose style used for news reporting in media, such as newspapers, radio and television.
In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech.
John Birt, Baron Birt is a British television executive and businessman. He is a former Director-General (1992–2000) of the BBC.
The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American journalist Ambrose Bierce, consisting of common words followed by humorous and satirical definitions. The lexicon was written over three decades as a series of installments for magazines and newspapers. Bierce's witty definitions were imitated and plagiarized for years before he gathered them into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 and then in a more complete version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911.
Your Sinclair, or YS as it was commonly abbreviated, was a commercially published and printed British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum. It was in circulation between 1984 and 1993.
Digitiser was a video games magazine that was broadcast on Teletext in the UK between 1993 and 2003. It originally billed itself as "The World's Only Daily Game Magazine".
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers a cinema, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews, and features. Total Film is available both in print and interactive iPad editions.
A typographical error, also called a misprint, is a mistake made in the typing of printed or electronic material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual typesetting. Technically, the term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors, or changing and misuse of words such as "than" and "then". Before the arrival of printing, the copyist's mistake or scribal error was the equivalent for manuscripts. Most typos involve simple duplication, omission, transposition, or substitution of a small number of characters.
Since their first appearance in 1963 there have been a number of variant models of the Daleks, a fictional alien race in the BBC science fiction television programme Doctor Who.
The Seventh Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is portrayed by Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy.
The Latin adverb sic inserted after a quoted word or passage indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated exactly as found in the source text, complete with any erroneous, archaic, or otherwise nonstandard spelling, punctuation, or grammar. It also applies to any surprising assertion, faulty reasoning, or other matter that might be interpreted as an error of transcription.
In graphic design, a pull quote is a key phrase, quotation, or excerpt that has been pulled from an article and used as a page layout graphic element, serving to entice readers into the article or to highlight a key topic. It is typically placed in a larger or distinctive typeface and on the same page. Pull quotes are often used in magazine and newspaper articles, annual reports, and brochures, as well as on the web. They can add visual interest to text-heavy pages with few images or illustrations.
Quotation marks are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same glyph. Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.
The fortnightly British satirical magazine Private Eye has long had a reputation for using euphemistic and irreverent substitute names and titles for people, groups and organisations and has coined a number of expressions to describe sex, drugs, alcohol and other aspects of human activity. Over the years these names and expressions have become in-jokes, used frequently in the magazine without explanation. Some have passed into general usage and can be found in other media and everyday conversation.
"As I Please" was a series of articles written between 1943 and 1947 for the British left-wing newspaper Tribune by author and journalist George Orwell.
Mad is known for many regular and semi-regular recurring features in its pages.
Musical quotation is the practice of directly quoting another work in a new composition. The quotation may be from the same composer's work (self-referential), or from a different composer's work (appropriation).
Private Eye is a British fortnightly satirical and current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely recognised for its prominent criticism and lampooning of public figures. It is also known for its in-depth investigative journalism into under-reported scandals and cover-ups.