Ian Hislop on his new play, Have I Got News For You and Private Eye

Private Eye editor and Have I Got News For You mainstay Ian Hislop has carved out a parallel career as a playwright. Along with his old schoolfriend and Eye cartoonist Nick Newman, he has written five plays that have opened at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, including the story of First World War satirical trench magazine, The Wipers Times;  Trial By Laughter, an account of the legal persecution of 19th Century humorist William Hone; and Spike, about Spike Milligan in the period he was writing The Goon Show.

Their latest stage offering, The Autobiography Of A Cad, is based on the 1938 novel by A.G. Macdonell and is a  ferocious satirical portrait of a conniving Tory MP, Edward Fox-Ingelby, who lies, cheats and sleeps his way to power, wealth and influence. Here Hislop speaks to Jay Richardson on its relevance for today, the enduring appeal of Have I Got News For You and whether the Eye is belatedly embracing diversity.

Your co-writer Nick Newman places Edward Fox-Ingelby in a lineage of incorrigible anti-heroes like Flashman and Alan B'Stard. How do you see him?

Yes, those are good fictional touchstones. But he's also Alan Clark, a bit Jonathan Aitken and Henry 'Chips' Channon, a very recognisable British politician, depending on how far you want to go back. He goes to Eton, Oxford, then joins the Tory party. He's got obvious Tory forebears. Interestingly though, when you read the novel, he's quite Blair-y. And his attitude to truth is pretty Trump-y. It's one of those classic texts that you can read so many people into.

The book suffered awful timing, coming out as the Second World War was brewing, and was consequently overlooked. Do you worry that, with Keir Starmer having become Prime Minister?

Well, the timing of these things is often either too late or too early. From day one some of the press were saying: 'Starmer's failed. Why doesn't he just resign now?' I mean, come on. He's got at least four years. You've had 14 with your lot, you might be being a touch premature.

What's compelling about doing Cad now is that we're in a world that feels a bit like the 1930s, particularly in Europe. There are a lot of right-wing parties on the rise. A lot of populist politics. So it's interesting to have a look at a dark satire from 1930s Britain, about a man who will say anything, whose grasp on truth is pretty light and who's convincingly good at self-justification.

Have you added any contemporary correspondences to the play? Were you tempted to give The Cad a blond wig?

We're trying to let the audience find the correspondences, rather than laying it on with a trowel. On the whole, comedy works better if you trust the audience to find it. [As with Tony Blair] The Cad essentially tells people he's a fairly straight kind of guy. British politics still looks quite similar.

Macdonell has been compared to P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh, do you feel he belongs in that class of wit?

Yeah, he's just really funny. Obviously, he appeals to me because he was a journalist, a sketch writer and theatre critic. He did anything, he was a great hack. 

England, Their England is very funny about journalism. My dad was Scottish and that book's about a Scotsman who gets shell shock in the war, is invalided out and turns up in England trying to find a job, which is what Macdonell's life essentially was. There's no huge leap of imagination for him. But he's very funny about England and funny about Britain as a whole. 

He has a slight outsider feel to him, despite being schooled at Winchester. Maybe he just thought that wasn't quite as good as Eton. I like his very modern journalistic sensibility.

With yourself and Nick having also written The Wipers Times and Trial By Laughter, it seems as if you want to shine a light on overlooked satirists. Is that fair?

Yes. It's not conscious. But looking at what we've done, we keep digging up people who were incredibly funny and didn't get their due. And it's just a real pleasure to sit at the back of a theatre, 100 years after The Wipers Times, 80 years after Macdonell's work sort of didn't quite make it, and see people rolling around laughing. I love that. 

William Hone [in Trial By Laughter] is even more striking. That was 1817. And God, he was funny. The idea that you could win a court case by making people laugh? I've tried that a few times and it's never worked!

You've again been drawn to a tale that finds humour in the horrors of a global conflict. Why?

It's the amazing gift of comedy to approach this subject in a way that makes it bearable. The Cad's behaviour during the First World War is truly shocking. One forgets, one tends to get a bit dewy-eyed and say well, everyone pulled together and it was an extraordinary time. But some pulled together. And some didn't. They just made a lot of money or tried very hard to do nothing at all.

These observations are worth remembering. On D-Day, I saw Nigel Farage wandering along the beach, lecturing teenagers about the Second World War. And I thought, what the veterans of D-Day did was they came home and voted Labour in very, very large numbers. You must remember what happens, not what you would like to happen. That's always interesting to me, distortion over time.

Parts of the novel read just like a spoof diary in Private Eye. Has it been a challenging adaptation for the stage, given that everything in the book is filtered through The Cad's prejudices and we only get the sense of other characters from his unwitting testimony? 

Yes, we've taken some liberties, which I don't think Macdonell would mind. We've also taken all the best jokes, obviously, which we're passing off as our own. He has this footnote, which is where we started. The Cad goes through this grand book and then admits at the end that he had a researcher and a typist who did most of the work. But he's not paying them. 

We thought it would be funny to have The Cad, the researcher who's essentially a Macdonell figure, an unsuccessful version of The Cad who's come through the war, and the typist, who's a young woman. So we've got these three main characters. But the actors also play all the other characters in his life, a lot of parts.

It was incredibly good fun to adapt. It wouldn't work as a monologue, we had to make it more dramatic. At the run-through I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I realised that the director had added things that had absolutely nothing to do with us.

Do you retain any respect for The Cad? He's at least perceptive about the abuses of power in society.

That's part of what makes it such a good read, that he's actually right about a lot of things. What he does with his observations is that he then follows them entirely in his own self-interest, which is what people do on the whole. He knows what works and he has an amazing gift for afterwards presenting his actions as though they were selfless all along. I find that very convincing. 

He's also an early example of boosterism I think. People like to be told that things are fine, over and over again. And it's very difficult currently not to think about Donald Trump all the time. This is a man who will say more or less anything. Blaming an air crash on diversity in air traffic control without even having a pretence of evidence. Just saying what you think is somehow meant to be enough.

Another connection with today, is that as a minister for the arts, The Cad doesn't seem to respect or care for them. Are you worried about the arts' future?

Yes. I thought it was absolutely classic that the first thing this man does when he gets a ministerial job is to try and sack everyone in regional theatre and censor everything coming in. 

The arts are very, very undervalued. And I don't mean we should give huge amounts of money to non-functioning things. But there is an undervaluing of how well Britain does them and how important they are. 

The Arts Council has had a very bad run in terms of imagining that they're being anti-elitist and somehow, broadening the arts, by targeting all sorts of extremely worthwhile organisations, particularly in the regions and in classical music. The Cad's not very interested in all that. But Private Eye certainly is.

Do you sympathise with Mrs Fox-Ingelby, as her husband spies on her – given you trailed by private detectives at Piers Morgan's behest, as he attempted to find dirt on you?

Yes, though as with Macdonell in the end, it was just incredibly funny. When Piers sent all of these people to my village, it just became farcical. Getting rung up by my vicar, saying 'I'm afraid I've had someone from the Mirror ringing me up and asking if you've been to confession and whether you've confessed anything interesting?' And my vicar, who is absolutely delightful, asked: 'They do know that in the Church of England we don't have confession?' 

That was marvellous, that the main point of intrigue was theological. There was this man in a clapped out car, it was so third-rate. They photographed me doing the school run, which is obviously great for my reputation. I also had a neighbour who was a very, very tough ex-policeman. He found this bloke loitering in his car and told him that he thought he was probably a 'fucking paedo' hanging around near his kids. It wasn't without its comedy.

But it's just what writers and journalists ought to do, turn these episodes into copy and make them humorous, turn them into jokes.

 The Cad, despite claiming to be mortified and deeply upset by the failure of his marriage, has taken the precaution of putting a detective on his wife. Appalling people are often surprisingly charming, which one forgets.

Yes. I was reading an old interview with you following Boris Johnson's earliest appearances on Have I Got News For You …

Speaking of appalling people!

And you were being very even-handed, rather more so than you might have been about him recently …

Well, he hadn't been Prime Minister then.

When I interviewed you in 2019 about Trial By Laughter, you felt that offence was increasingly being taken towards comedy. The world has changed so much since then, do you feel that this is happening even more now?

Yes. I don't mean, 'ooh, you can't say anything anymore'. Because I find that incredibly boring. And it's usually said by people who've got a Netflix show. 

But I dislike this quick jump to say 'I find this offensive'. I want to counter that by saying, well, it's black and it's tough but it's got a point and your being offended isn't the only value in the world. A more robust view of comedy might be more healthy.

Have I Got News For You and Private Eye seem like outliers or throwbacks in a media being stripped of satirical content. Do you worry that the Trump era has ushered in a feeling of defeatism on the part of satirists? Also, I know plenty of people who are now actively disengaging from the news. Does that worry you?

Yes, I think both of those things are concerning. One is that you feel well, we did all this satire, we thought we were very funny and it didn't matter. People voted anyway and they prefer that. However, saying 'you're orange and you lie a lot', that's not stopping anything. There's got to be a better way to do it.

And when people disengage, they stop believing in anything. It's all very well saying that you can't believe anything in the mainstream news. But reading the things outside of it is even less patrolled. At least you tend to know where the prejudices are in the mainstream media. You can account for them. 

Online, it's difficult for people to accept that they're being fed stuff by bad actors. I can see that you're annoyed and suspicious. But why do you just believe something that just appears on your phone, telling you a major crime was committed by an asylum seeker who's a personal friend of Keir Starmer? I know you want to believe it. But why? 

That has become a real problem.

What do you make of the US version of Have I Got News For You? It's striking how seriously the panel answer the questions compared to the UK version.

I thought Roy [Wood Jr, the host] was very funny when he came over and did our version. He just appeared and claimed he was seeking asylum. 

My experience of working in America is that they're much less keen on satire. Nick and I did a version of Spitting Image there a long time ago [in 1986]. And we got fired, as did the entire show, by some incredulous man from NBC, saying: 'Are you guys … are you guys suggesting that the President of the United States is an asshole?!' 

And we said 'well, yeah, we are really, that's sort of the script.' We didn't last long.

They've always been more reverential about the idea of their institutions. Though Trump has arguably managed to trash that. So I'm not sure if it's still true. 

But if we think we're polarised here, there really are just two parties over there. And for their version of Have I Got News For You, for Jon Stewart [on the Daily Show] or similar shows, it's difficult. They're serving one audience. And Fox News and some of the most popular podcasters are serving another, there's very little crossover and that makes things tough.

I still hope our Have I Got News For You has a broader audience, the viewing figures we're getting on BBC One suggest that we are. But if I believed the onlinesphere, I'd understand that we were libtard woke sell-outs who should be shot. 

You mentioned Spitting Image. What did you make of the revival and do you have an opinion on why it didn't last?

I'll always wish them well and I like Roger [Law, the show's co-creator] very much. But I'd never want to try to compete with what Nick and I writing when we were in our 20s because we'd lose. Spitting Image was a time, a moment and it was extraordinary. I wouldn't personally want to try to recreate that.

Are we likely to see you on the Have I Got Sport For You spin-off any anytime soon?

Only if they're really desperate. Hat Trick is spawning hydra-like versions. But I'm only really interested in the original.

Private Eye has made a concession to modernity with its Page 94 podcast. Why do you think that's been successful?

Largely because I'm not on it very often. Andy [Hunter Murray], Adam [Macqueen] and Helen [Lewis] are terrific on it, they're essentially why it works. I always feel like Mr Grace coming out of the lift and saying 'you've all done very well', before heading back upstairs. A comedy reference for the youngsters there.

While President Trump is rolling back diversity initiatives, do you feel as if Private Eye has become less of an old boy's club these days, with fewer St Cakes references and the like?

Well, I'm all for St Cakes references. I still love them. I suppose I try, not very consciously, to do something about that. Our recruitment process is not wide-ranging and energetic. People just tend to turn up or come our way. And that's partly because that's how I did it, how half the people working there did it. The last person I recruited slipped a handwritten note through the door which made me laugh a lot. And I thought: 'Hmm, I might have to hire you'. 

We are certainly more diverse now. But I'm not sure we'd pass a full audit on it.

Returning to the the playwriting, is there a sense that for yourself and Nick, it's all very well sniping from the sidelines but you want to get your hands dirty creatively?

Yes. We wrote a lot of telly in the old days, lots of half-hour plays for Dawn French and those Murder Most Horrids. Then we did My Dad's The Prime Minister, which was a sort of comedy-drama [for CBBC, starring Robert Bathurst]. So we always enjoyed writing fiction and I think it's fine to have a go. You have to be strong enough to put it out there and have people tell you it's boring and doesn't make them laugh. 

That's okay, you've got to live with that. Being timid about it is bad news. So many journalists who become writers of fiction, if they looked back on their previous criticism, none of them would ever do it. Tom Stoppard started out as a journalist. Michael Frayn. Some seriously good people made the transition to playwright. So I don't have any fear and trembling.

Several of your plays have been adapted for other media. Do you hope The Autobiography of a Cad could be turned into something for broadcast?

Possibly. I'd quite like it to tour or move beyond Newbury. That's where all of our plays have started, they're fantastically good at launching things. But it depends how it goes. Trial By Laughter was a BBC Radio play, which was really fun and worked very well in that context. A Bunch of Amateurs was originally a film. And The Wipers Times became a play after it was a film for BBC Two. This one, I'd really like to have a longer theatre life if I'm honest.

Are you quite hands-on? Will you be there on opening night?

Yes. But that's different from being hands-on. More being in the way. There comes a point as a writer where you're mildly morale-boosting but not really contributing much otherwise. Which is probably a good thing. Paul Hart is a very, very good director. He's perfected the art of looking at us, saying 'that's very interesting', then disappearing back to the rehearsal room.

Like The Cad, you've chosen a different career path to your father. But your son, Will Hislop, has followed you into comedy, as an actor and as part of the double act Giants. How does that make you feel? 

Well, obviously I'd have preferred it if he'd wanted to become a chartered surveyor or got a proper job. But people do what they want to do. And fortunately, he's very, very good. So that helps.

Do you have any other creative projects in the offing?

I might do another series of Ian Hislop's Oldest Jokes on Radio 4. I enjoyed that very much, looking through medieval manuscripts. The Venerable Bede and Anglo Saxon gags. I've obviously got a thing about old jokes, I keep going back and looking for them. 

I find it very comforting that people have always essentially laughed at the same things. Those earliest references to 'hleahtor' and Anglo Saxon appreciation of people who were thought of like metalsmiths or woodworkers, people who worked with laughter. An honest trade and quite respected, from quite far back. 

So I suppose I am quite traditional in that way. Working in a vein where a lot of very good people have gone before.

• The Autobiography of a Cad, which stars Spike's James Mack in the title role,  runs from tonight till March 22 at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury.

Published: 7 Feb 2025