Have just watched this gushing BBC tribute to the Eye from David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Ken Clarke.

Am too depressed to get out of bed today.

A well-deserved appreciation of the first Lord Gnome, Andrew Osmond, from the Grimsby Telegraph here.

You can listen to Michael Crick’s Radio 4 documentary about the Eye’s anniversary here.

*the title of the Eye’s fifth flexidisc, given away with the mag in December 1967, fact fans

Here’s a review that means an awful lot to me. Paul Foot’s son Tom on the Eye’s 50th, and memories of his dad.

The Today programme played a small extract from Michael Crick’s documentary about Private Eye this morning.

You can listen to it here.

The whole programme goes out at 10.30 on Saturday morning, on BBC Radio 4.

…. but for one week only, and a different mag. Ian Hislop is the guest editor of this week’s Shortlist, as thrust into your hands outside all good stations, and there’s a taster of its contents here.

I’ll be on Shaun Keaveny’s breakfast show on BBC 6 Music this Wednesday to talk about the book and the Eye’s 50th anniversary: listen here if you like.

On Saturday, TV’s gorgeous pouting Michael Crick will be presenting a whole documentary about Private Eye on Radio 4 at 10.30am: Lord Gnome Aged 49 and Three Quarters.

And you can still hear me giving Anne McElvoy a tour of the Eye office on Radio 3′s Night Waves if you can work out how to “download” a “podcast” from here.

“There was a time in the late 1980s when Private Eye appeared to be heading for the same rest home that was caring for Punch. A mischievous newcomer, Viz, had taken the publishing world by storm and was selling around 1m copies. And its comic energy was beginning to make the Eye look a bit middle-aged.

Yet, as the magazine prepares to celebrate its 50th birthday next month, it seems to be thriving. The Eye sells around 206,000 copies every fortnight, a higher circulation than The Independent. And Viz? It manages just under 68,000, not much more than the Shropshire Star. So what is the secret behind the institution described in this enjoyable if slightly self-congratulatory tribute as ‘Britain’s first, most successful and indeed only fortnightly satirical magazine’?”
Roland White, Sunday Times, 25th September

I’ve been congratulating myself on this review ever since.

“There’s an excellent new book out about the first 50 years of Private Eye, written by Adam Macqueen and published by Private Eye Productions Ltd. Earlier this year, Lord Gnome looked for a joint deal with some mainstream publishing companies, but they all backed out, fearing potential litigation and the cost of insurance cover. How lily-livered.”
Richard Brooks, Biteback Column, Sunday Times, 25th September

They ran some extracts from the book in their News Review, too. Those are also behind the paywall – but if you go behind this paywall and wait a couple of days for delivery you can read the whole thing…

“Private Eye celebrates its 50th anniversary next month with an A-Z history of itself (Private Eye: The First 50 Years) that’s tremendously interesting and might even be an Important Social Document. EJ Thribb, ‘talking about Uganda’, Dave Spart, Glenda Slag: the origins of all are explained, and the Eye’s truly poisonous streak in the late 1970s owned up to. Not everyone on the staff is a hero. There’s never a dull page.”
Ian Jack, Guardian, 24th September.

It’s not online, but the paper’s efforts to beatify the Eye’s editor on the same day are.

My book appears to be being accused of being “dangerously respectable” in this profile of Ian Hislop, the “Dalai Lama of satire”, in the Guardian.. Which is quite a claim, for a volume that manages to spread the C-word all over pages 68 and 69…