Guido Fawked – 16 Years Behind Private Eye

The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his obedient rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog has set great store recently by telling his adoring readers just how much more up-to-the-minute and on the ball he is than Private Eye magazine. No opportunity to lay into Master Emmanuel Strobes and the rest of those labouring in the service of Lord Gnome has been passed up.

Course we're first, first to the bar, shit, sorry, story. We get stronger spirits, bollocks, no, leads. And we get bigger rounds, oh stuff it, scoops. Of beer. Oh sod it

So, in the interests of fairness, it has to be pointed out that The Great Guido is not always as cutting edge as he would have everyone believe. To illustrate this, we need look no further than an item posted today on Young Dave and his jolly good visit to Brussels for the EU Budget negotiations, titled “Dave’s Budget Triumph Success?” and portraying Cameron as Neville Chamberlain.

“Reform In Our Time” is the strapline (as we already have peace). So that’s The Great Guido’s best shot at originality and topicality, is it? Really up-to-date and superior in every way to the “dead tree press” competition? Knocks Private Eye into the proverbial cocked hat, does it? But you know what’s coming around the corner. And that’s that we’ve been here before.

Yes, folks, Private Eye did a serving-Prime-Minister-as-Chamberlain-after-returning-from-Munich cover some time ago. So long ago, in fact, that the serving PM was “Shagger” Major. Issue 901 of the Eye featured “Major’s Triumph” with his head instead of Chamberlain’s, and the word balloon telling that this was “beef in our time”. So how long ago was that?

Eye 901 hit the news stands on 28 June 1996. That’s more than sixteen and a half years before The Great Guido’s wonderfully cutting edge effort.

What was that about “you’re either ahead of Guido, or behind”? More like “you’re either ahead of Guido, or 16 years ahead”. Another fine mess, once again.