Radio silence likely to continue for some time because, as you may have guessed, I’m now quite heavily engaged in writing the actual book (18,000 words and counting), which doesn’t leave me with much time for writing anything else.

In the meantime I thought you might like to see the noticeboard above my desk, which serves partially as inspiration, partially as reminder of what needs to be included, and largely as a set of really fantastic pictures to decorate the dark corner of a bedroom I call my office.

Click here to enlarge photo

Extra marks for those of you who can spot:

a) the scariest Father Christmas ever
b) Ian Hislop with hair
c) Ian Hislop with wings
c) Ralph Steadman’s infant daughter
d) A Barry Fantoni original with added abuse of John Wells
e) Mohamed ‘Al’ Fayed sending birthday greetings via Nick Newman

Extra, extra marks for those of you who buy the book next year and tick them off as they appear.

That photo of the Beatles reading Private Eye in the last edition? It got Hunter Davies very excited indeed. Craig Brown once accused Davies of labelling and storing his own toenail clippings, but it appears he actually restrains himself to number ones:

Sir,
Please say it’s true, that you didn’t fiddle or digitally alter that photo of the Beatles sitting at what appears to be a greasy spoon caff reading what clearly appears to be a copy of Private Eye (Letters, Eye 1247). As a collector of early Private Eyes, all the way back to Number One of October 25, 1961, one of the most valuable number ones of any national organ (now worth thousands, for only 500 were printed), and also of Beatles memorabilia, I was thrilled to see two of my collecting passions coming together.
I do hope it is genuine. If so, what was the date of the attractive-looking location?

HUNTER DAVIES
London

It must have been May 1963, given that the mag in question is issue number 37. Which means – rustles notes – they would have been reading a great deal of heavy hinting about Duncan Sandys, and that “the death took place quietly yesterday of Mr David Frost, one of the most brilliant and outspoken critics and commentators of his generation. The cause of death was believed to have been overstrain of the talent.”

You can see the photo – and buy a copy – here.

Given today’s legal shenanigans over reporting of the question posed in parliament by Paul Farrelly MP about the (until now) secret injunction obtained by Trafigura and the Eye’s old friends the solicitors Carter-Fuck – for details see here (the question in, er, question, runs in full in the issue of Private Eye out today as well) – it seems like a good point to reflect on some recent history.

On 5 May this year Eye editor Ian Hislop appeared alongside Twitter hero of the hour Alan Rusbridger before the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, where they were questioned by – hey! – Paul Farrelly MP about the dangerous implications of just such injunctions. The transcript’s here – you’ll need to scroll down to Q849 to get to their bit.

On a slightly less depressing note, Peter Carter-Fuck, the late founder of the firm, once phoned Robin Shaw, the Eye’s lawyer, and asked him if he could persuade the magazine to stop referring to him as Peter Carter-Fuck. They agreed. And started referring to him as Peter Farter-Ruck instead.

Keith Waterhouse only wrote one thing for Private Eye, for issue 73, published on 2nd October 1964. It was a piece about opinion polls just ahead of the election Harold Wilson was about to win, co-written with his regular collaborator Willis Hall and entitled “What is a Don’t Know?”

I’m not going to give you the text of it here. But I am going to give you this telegram, which for many years has been pinned to a noticeboard in Richard Ingrams’ – and subsequently Ian Hislop’s – office.

OVERNIGHT INGRAMS PRIVATE EYE 22 GREEK STREET W1 =
YOUR PAGE 4 REPRODUCTION OF KHALIL SHABIS LETTER BRINGS YOU DOWN TO LEVEL OF PETERBOROUGH DAILY TELEGRAPH WHICH REGULARLY HAS BIG LAUGH AT INABILITY OF ARABS TO SPEAK ENGLISH STOP HOW IS YOUR ARABIC = KEITH WATERHOUSE +

(God alone knows why it’s come out sideways… New technology baffles pissed old hack.)

Issue 73 also featured the first flexidisc – fixed to the cover over a photograph of Alec Douglas-Home on the toilet with a speech bubble saying “Put that record back AT ONCE!”, the very first appearance of Spiggy Topes and the Turds, as introduced by Maureen Cleavage, and the launch of the Stuff Your Own Quintin Hogg cushion kit. It’s rather a good one…

Michael Jellicoe, a “life time reader” of Private Eye, passed away earlier this year. His partner, Naomi Wright, sent us these photos of his coffin, which was decorated with his favourite things in life…

Clearly a man of impeccable taste.

Here’s a rum do. Ian Burrell, of the Independent, gets it bang-on about about the Eye’s digital strategy (or pointed lack of one).

But – writing just a couple of months back – he refers to the mag’s “monochrome presentation”. And when I mentioned this to someone else who probably looks at the magazine as regularly as Burrell does, his reply was “it is still black and white, isn’t it?”

Private Eye has been printed in colour for more than a decade now. Here – lovingly fished from a bin by me in the knowledge that they’d come in useful at some point – are some of the practice covers produced in March 1998 as the mag prepared to wave goodbye to black and white forever…

Next week: how much hacks on the Independent enjoy the Secret Diary of John Major and Jeff Bernard’s racing column in the Eye each fortnight…

Reverend George Pitcher misses the point of a joke and takes issue with the Eye’s last cover in his Daily Telegraph blog here.

Just to prove there’s no no-fuck policy, a quick reminder of December 1993.

And to prove there’s no objection to buggery in the Eye office either…

A nice account of one of the fortnightly Private Eye lunches at the Coach and Horses in Soho from Iain Dale here.

Yes, alright, I’m only posting that because he says nice things about me…

The rather peculiar entry for Private Eye on that ever-reliable site Wikipedia states with some confidence that the lunch is known as “The Old Crappola”. They provide a reference for it and everything, so it must be true. Despite the fact that no-one at Private Eye has ever heard of the phrase…

Issue 654, 9 Jan 1987

See that baby being flourished by the Labour hierarchy as what they hope will be an election-winning tool? That’s Georgia Gould, of Erith and Thamesmead candidature fame, that is…

Reports I will be identifying every bystander ever to appear on the cover of the magazine are thought to be exaggerated. Although I’d love to hear from anyone who’s ever found themselves with an unexpected claim to fame courtesy of the Eye…

Private Eye 1990-2008 was the specialist subject of one contestant on last night’s Mastermind on BBC2. Viewers in the UK should be able to watch it on iplayer here for the next week.

I knew more answers than he did. But I didn’t know all of them. Should I be worried?