Jon Stewart meets Ian Hislop

March 8, 2023 8:45 AM

"Bloody hell! Jon is in London to talk about populism. Turns out it’s not unique to America! Jon is joined by Ian Hislop, editor of the satirical current affairs publication Private Eye Magazine, to discuss the reign of Rupert Murdoch, the economic consequences of a government run by lunatics, and the explicitly corrupt yet unbeatable right-wing propaganda machine."
posted by Paul Slade (18 comments total)

It's like two parts of my multiverse are colliding! Thanks for posting -- didn't know about this. Will check it out next!
posted by hippybear at 8:51 AM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

just gonna leave this evergreen quote from rooya_boolya here:

→ I sometimes think that HIGNFY was a key element in the ascent of Boris Johnson to power by normalising him and allowing him to hone his rakish buffon persona.

posted by scruss at 9:57 AM on March 8, 2023 [11 favorites]

For all its merits, Private Eye has a terrible record on trans issues. While it's not the focus of this episode, I can only hope some of Stewart's latest performances dressing down Republican legislators will make an impression on Hislop too.
posted by passengera34 at 10:10 AM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm really not sure Ian Hislop is the right person to appear here.
posted by peacesign at 10:45 AM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Having watched every episode of HIGNFY I could find online, in order (it was a journey, let me tell you), I can say that Johnson was made to look as bad as possible by the cast of the show as often as possible. If it did anything, it simply put Johnson in front of cameras, but he was a career politician working his way up the party before he was ever on the show, and the show did its best to belittle him every chance it got. Maybe this is a case of all publicity is good publicity, but they were not promoting him at all, and in fact were working to tear him down.

Certainly plenty of other political types appeared on the show repeatedly without becoming prime minister, and certainly Liz Truss was never on the show except in video clips. So I don't really see the connection from where I sit in the here and now.
posted by hippybear at 12:28 PM on March 8, 2023 [9 favorites]

Agreeing with hippybear. They treated him as mercilessly as any other problematic public figure while he clearly showed himself to be a liar and an incompetent - and the audience laughed at him not with him as well. That he still ended up prime minister anyway is the fault of his deluded supporters and the British political system, not HIGNFY.

I'd love to see some American wrong-uns be similarly reviled and laughed at to their faces in public...though I suspect they're so utterly shameless that it wouldn't matter much.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:00 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

I vaguely recall that Hislop acknowledges that HIGNFY had some role in raising the public profile of Johnson and probably wouldn't have done it had he known that he'd be able to fail upwards through London and into the Prime Minister's office, but also that quite a lot of other people deserve their fair share of the blame as well. They at least clocked Johnson immediately.
posted by Merus at 3:53 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Clearly they didn't clock him hard enough. :D
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:03 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

it would have made for tremendous television, imagine seeing Boris Johnson's hairdo after he got punched in the face
posted by Merus at 5:01 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

How different from normal could it end up being?
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:51 PM on March 8, 2023

I think the real glory would have been seeing the punch in super slow motion so you could appreciate every possible hairdo from the moment right before impact, through the impact, and then as it rebounds after the impact.
posted by hippybear at 6:00 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have great residual affection for Hislop and Private Eye but it's been increasingly and painfully obvious for many years now that the make-up of Eye contributors is only slightly more diverse than the Monty Python team was. This shows not just in their continued, inexplicable and hideous defence of TERFery as somehow itself a victim of injustice but also in 'From The Messageboards', a bizarrely weak attempt to satirise The Internet apparently written by someone who themselves goes online only rarely but does have vague memories of being told about it over lunch once. Whatever it once was, it's now very much the Establishment satirising itself; it has big blind spots, one of which is the fact that it has blind spots.
posted by motty at 6:19 PM on March 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

I've been under the impression that Hislop should maybe be finding the next new Young Ian to bring under his wing and turn things over to for a few years. And I don't even read the magazine.
posted by hippybear at 6:26 PM on March 8, 2023

Metafilter: It has big blind spots, one of which is the fact that it has blind spots.
posted by MrVisible at 6:46 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Boris' first appearance, April 24, 1998 (nearly 25 years ago!)

Possibly the last time he put a comb through his hair.
posted by hippybear at 7:05 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

(Like, out of over 30 years of being on the air, they're only missing maybe fewer than 50 episodes. As I said, it's quite a journey. But it's also a history refresher and a great source of humor. And I think the new season starts in less than a month!)
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

The HIGNFY episodes catapulted Johnson from a random MP that only political wonks could identify to a household name. And they had him on again year after year as a memorable recurring character. If you just watch the episodes in isolation you aren't going to get that.
posted by grahamparks at 7:50 AM on March 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: [E]very possible hairdo from the moment right before impact, through the impact, and then as it rebounds after the impact
posted by riverlife at 1:36 PM on March 9, 2023