4 days ago
My cousin Alex unearthed this gem at the weekend. The old man is Uncle Chris reading a paper perhaps ten years ago. On the front is a photo from 1963 of Richard Ingrams, Uncle Chris at the typewriter, and Willie Rushton working on an early edition of Private Eye. The quote, in these dark times for free speech, is very apposite.
217 days ago
It was only a couple of weeks ago when the hapless Tory MP William Wragg was exposed for exposing himself on Grindr and then being blackmailed that I made reference to Uncle Chris, the late Christopher Booker HERE. The image from Private Eye of the Court of SuperMac dressed as if for the fall of Rome, which hangs in the downstairs loo at The Old Rectory, is again in my mind. It is as if Tory MP’s get an automatic account with the gay dating app Grindr when they are elected. Again, another Private Eye joke springs to mind.
230 days ago
In the house of my late uncle Christopher Booker the walls feature a number of original cartoons from the publication he co-founded, Private Eye. Yes kids… the professional celeb and media tart Ian Hislop did NOT found Private Eye. My favourite is one that is very much in my mind today amid news of the latest Tory sex scandal, one from the Profumo era of 1963, drawn by Willie Rushden.
532 days ago
Yes, Schofield and the cover up at ITV is a real scandal and there is a double standard there in that had Schofield been shagging a 17 year old junior female employee he’d have been out three years ago. As he today takes to the airwaves to accuse his critics of being motivated by homophobia there is a humungous double standard. This is the Kevin Spacey defence “Look I am gay so ignore the huge power disparity between me and that teenage boy I shagged but if a male executive shags a female intern he is exploiting a power gap and must be crucified. I so support #Metoo.” I discussed the ITV cover-up of Phil and how everyone knew HERE. However…
1026 days ago
I warned you time ad time again that Novacyt (NCYT) was a ramp with the sole purpose of allowing now departed CEO Graham Mullis to trouser an enormous cash bonus based on the share price on just one day. In the end Mullis trousered £8.5 million but, last week, Private Eye served up a great article showing how the company has a cultrure of lying and fabrication and had investors known the truth about tests that did not work or which were contaminated, Mullis would be far less well off than he is today. This is a scandal and the ramifications could be very serious. Potentially a claim by the DHSC could wipe out most of this company’s balance sheet (cash of £100million) with ongoing cash burn now that sales of its covid tests are evaporating, taking out the rest. This remains a bargepole stock/short. The article is below.
1301 days ago
Gosh I miss my late uncle Chris and our hour long, weekly, chats that would just go on and on skipping from topic to topic almost seamlessly. He may have founded Private Eye but we both did the jokes. We both have a history of falling out with folks and made sure that we had no such bust ups so if we disagreed as we did just now and again there was always a workaround. So we disagreed on Brexit as he regarded me as a “no deal” hard line fruitcake and I wore that badge with honour. But rather than debate it we just agreed that Theresa May was the worst Prime Minister in history, laughed and moved on. Back in the nineties those chats would see us spending some time on Tory sleaze. You remember that MP who shared a bed with another chap and said he was doing it to save money? The jokes wrote themselves back then.
1333 days ago
I sometimes find myself searching my emails for something or other and stumble on something completely unexpected. Tonight I stumble on the raw text of what my uncle, the late Christopher Booker, submitted to the Sunday Telegraph for January 16 2015 after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. I am not sure if the Torygraph tweaked it but here is the original and in exposing the pious hypocrisy of the great and good back then, we might all reflect on matters such as the drowning silence of the left in defence of free speech in Bradford today. But also, as Chris notes, on why certain sections of the Moslem community do feel so justifiably angry and that can vent in various ways. I commend to you a great piece of journalism.
1411 days ago
I wrote before Christmas of the joy when a cheddar cheese arrived from the wife and son of my late Uncle Chris Booker. Something that has happened for all my life continues. In return, I sent a Yarg as I always do. That Cheddar was about eight inches high and, as you can see below, is now almost all gone. About a week ago, four things I know Chris despised, combined to make me think of him and that Christmas present.
1431 days ago
I note that Matt Hancock has a First Class degree in PPE from Oxford and admit that I cannot match his Geoff. I only achieved a Desmond from the same place in the same subject and, at the time, I remember thinking that I was jolly lucky not to have racked up a Douglas. I am pretty sure that my late uncle Christopher Booker had the same feeling after coming away with a second from Cambridge where he read history.
1530 days ago
I bring you the tweet below from Ms Ramsha Khan, which fills me with utter despair for the vocation of journalism.
1968 days ago
A true giant of post war journalism died the night before last with his two sons at his bed side. Much will written elsewhere about his achievements: Co-founder of Private Eye, scriptwriter at TW3, Campaigning Journalist of the Year (opposing awful inner City redevelopment), Telegraph columnist for 60 years, the Godfather of Euroscepticism. The Guardian, if true to form, will have nasty words about that and about his exposing the global warming hoax.
2738 days ago
Arron Banks is a big UKIP backer as is his pal Jim Mellon, although the old asset stripper of Uramin infamy is not actually allowed to vote in the UK as he lives offshore in the Isle of Man. Private Eye this week looks at how the two men have not exactly prospered by backing the underperforming, sub scale, IOM-based, AIM-listed, bank Manx Financial (MFX). It also questions whether Banks is as rich as he claims. Enjoy...
2857 days ago
2017 starts off, following the theme of the second half of 2016. It is another related party obituary from the rapidly thinning ranks of my father's generation. They are now the front line. I stand in the second. There is still one Great Aunt who stands in front of my father's peers but she stands alone, her line has all gone.
3729 days ago
It is a twenty five minute walk from the Greek Hovel down snake hill to the spring and up past the deserted monastery and a stretch of olive groves to the village of Kambos. But it is where my nearest neighbours live and I now know enough folks to say yassas to many of them as I bike in, although no-one other than wonderful Eleni, the taverna owner speaks any English. One of the joys of Kambos is that absolutely nothing ever happens there. Me falling off my motorbike at 3 MPH in front of Eleni’s taverna was the big news of the summer. That was until we had the murders.
3757 days ago
With a hat tip to EJ Thribb from Private Eye, Matt Earl, the Dark Destroyer, has penned a poem in honour of joke China AIM company Naibu (NBU) after its comedy statement of today. It reads:
Mr Lin throw Quangang in the bin.
4055 days ago
This is a superb Private Eye Front Cover - a total classic.
4189 days ago
It seems as if Sunday 2nd June 2013 was the busiest day in the history of this blog – a happy first anniversary. More than 42,000 page impressions in one day is about the same as I enjoyed in the whole of the first eight weeks of this site. Of course I know that it is nothing to do with this being my first anniversary and all to do with those magic words #DowningStreetAffair.
Right now I sit onboard the 21.42 from Paddington heading for a few days with my father and step mother, the arch deluded lefties of Shipston on Stour. I appeared to be in everyone’s good books for volunteering to baby sit for step sister Flea on Wednesday. As an added benefit, by the time I had volunteered she already had another offer and so I am off the hook.
However I now appear to have regained evil son status by suggesting that my Step Mother phones her brother Sir George Young asking him for his take on the Downing Street affair. Apparently this was not considered funny – I was only kidding.
Apparently I am still suspected of selling some story about “wicked Uncle George” (being a Tory he is naturally considered wicked in my family) to Private Eye about 20 years ago. On that occasion I was blameless. But I suspect folks are right not to bank on my discretion were Sir George to spill the beans. Not that most of us won’t already know all by the morning as twitter and the foreign press force Call Me Dave to come clean.
4225 days ago
Christopher Booker founded Private Eye, was campaigning journalist of the year several times in the 1970s and as a columnist on the Sunday Telegraph and ( sometimes) on the Daily Mail he is a scourge of global warming nutters, the EU and all things that right thinking folks despise. He is also my uncle and godfather. And he knew the late Margaret Thatcher well. His speech at UK Investor Show on April 13 reflects on that and on Maggie’s U-Turns on Europe and on global warming as well as setting the record straight on her attitude to apartheid. It is a stormer.
4244 days ago
We are lucky to have a speaker already lined up at the UK’s top investor show which takes place this Saturday April 13th who knew Margaret Thatcher well. In fact we have several but in light of the sad demise of Britain’s greatest Prime Minister we have moved Christopher Booker, the founder of Private Eye and celebrated Sunday Telegraph columnist to the main stage during the afternoon to talk about “The Margaret Thatcher I knew – nearly always right in the end.”
I chatted to Booker – who is my uncle and godfather - this morning and our reflections on the Iron Lady covered her Euro scepticism, the treachery of her colleagues, the lie that she supported apartheid, her conversion from a supporter of global warming theory to becoming an ardent global warming sceptic and many other issues. Booker will cover how and why her views changed on these and other topics and how our leaders today might perhaps reflect on this.
The revised speaker line-up on our main stage is now:
10 AM Opening Remarks
10.10-11 AM Nigel Wray & Nick Leslau
11.00 – 11.45 AM – Tom Winnifrith with bear raider Lucian Miers
11.45-11.55 – the short debate: Is AIM doomed Tom Winnifrith vs Richard Poulden
11.55-12.40 – Comedian and gold guru Dominic Frisbey on gold
1.40-2.35 PM – The Traders session: Clem Chambers, Alpesh Patel, Zak Mir, Evil Knievil and John Piper
2.35-3.15 – Christopher Booker
3.45 – 4.30 Mark Slater
4.30-5.15 Nigel Farage MEP ( who will I am sure also mention the Iron Lady)
We still have a handful of tickets going for the show due to late cancellations. If you wish to attend email your postal address with postcode and how many tickets you require to [email protected] and the tickets will be despatched first class at once.
I look forward to seeing you on Saturday 13th April at Excel.
Tom Winnifrith
