Ian Hislop

Ian David Hislop (born 13 July 1960) is a British journalist, satirist, and television personality.

Hislop was born on 13 July 1960 in Mumbles, Swansea, to a Scottish father, David Hislop, from Ayrshire, and a Channel Islander mother born in Jersey, Helen Rosemarie Hislop (née Beddows), who left for Wales in her late teens.

Hislop did not know his grandparents.

His paternal grandfather, David Murdoch Hislop, died just before he was born.

His maternal grandfather, William Beddows, was originally from Lancashire.

When he was five months old, Hislop's family began to travel around the world because of his father's job as a civil engineer.

During his infant years, Hislop lived in Nigeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Hong Kong.

While in Saudi Arabia, Hislop has said he possibly went to school with Osama bin Laden.

When Hislop was 12 years old his father died; his mother died when he was 32.

On his return to Britain he was educated at Ardingly College, an independent boarding school, where he became head boy, and began his satirical career directing and appearing in revues alongside Nick Newman.

Hislop's and Newman's association continued when they attended Oxford University together; later they worked together at Private Eye and on a number of comedy scriptwriting jobs.

Hislop applied to read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, but changed to English literature before arriving at Magdalen College.

His Oxford tutors included Bernard O'Donoghue, John Fuller and David Norbrook.

While at university, Hislop was actively involved in student journalism; he relaunched and edited the satirical magazine Passing Wind.

Hislop's first article in the Eye appeared in 1980 before he sat his university finals.

A parody of The Observer magazine's "Room of My Own" feature, it described an IRA prisoner on the dirty protest decorating his cell in "fetching brown".

Hislop, usually in partnership with Nick Newman, was a scriptwriter on the 1980s political satire series Spitting Image, in which puppets were used to depict well-known figures, mostly politicians.

He even had a puppet of himself, which sometimes appeared as a background character in sketches.

He graduated with a 2:1 in 1981.

At Oxford, Hislop revived and edited the magazine Passing Wind, for which he interviewed Richard Ingrams, who was then editor of Private Eye, and Peter Cook, then the majority shareholder.

Hislop's television debut was on the short-lived Channel 4 chat show Loose Talk in 1983, an experience he disliked so much that he included it on his list of most hated items when he first appeared on the BBC show Room 101.

He is the editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye, a position he has held since 1986.

Hislop joined the publication immediately after leaving Oxford, and became editor in 1986 following Ingrams's departure.

This met opposition from Eye journalists Peter McKay and Nigel Dempster, who attempted a revolt against Hislop with the former taking Peter Cook out for lunch in an attempt to dissuade him from appointing Hislop.

Cook, reportedly drunk after the lunch, instead announced Hislop was "welcome aboard".

The new editor, dismissive of society gossip, sacked both McKay and Dempster from the magazine without hesitation.

As editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop is reputedly the most sued man in English legal history, although he is not involved in as many libel actions as he once was.

A libel case was brought against Private Eye and Hislop in 1986 by the publisher Robert Maxwell after the magazine accused him of funding Labour leader Neil Kinnock's travel expenses as a means of gaining a peerage.

After the case Hislop quipped: "I've just given a fat cheque to a fat Czech".

Another libel case in May 1989 threatened the magazine's existence when it was ordered to pay £600,000 in damages following an action for libel by Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

Hislop told reporters waiting outside the High Court: "If that's justice, then I'm a banana."

The award was dropped to £60,000 on appeal.

He has appeared on numerous radio and television programmes and has been a team captain on the BBC satirical quiz show Have I Got News for You since its inception in 1990.

Hislop has been involved in numerous legal battles, as Private Eye has often been sued for libel over the years.

Despite these challenges, Hislop has remained a key figure in British satire and journalism.

After his death in 1991, Maxwell was revealed to be an extensive fraudster, illegally drawing on his companies' pension funds; his last writ for libel against the Eye and Hislop was about this "malicious" and "mendacious" claim.

In an interview with Third Way Magazine in 1995 he explained his intentions in his work: "Satire is the bringing to ridicule of vice, folly and humbug. All the negatives imply a set of positives. Certainly in this country, you only go round saying, 'That's wrong, that's corrupt' if you have some feeling that it should be better than that. People say, 'You satirists attack everything.' Well, we don't, actually. That's the whole point."

In April 2017, Hislop won the London Press Club's print journalist of the year award; in his acceptance speech he said that Private Eye obtaining its best ABC sales figures since the magazine's launch 55 years earlier proved that "journalism is A, worth doing, and B, worth paying for both in terms of paying journalists and the public paying up for it".

In January 2022, Hislop alongside fellow Eye journalists Richard Brooks and Solomon Hughes presented evidence on MPs' conduct to the House of Commons' Standards Committee.

Hislop is credited as the author of the recent Private Eye annuals.