★★☆☆☆Woe betide the young hack who falls foul of Private Eye. Ian Hislop, the satirical magazine’s quick-spirited editor, has perhaps more of a public profile, but the comedy writer Nick Newman, with whom Hislop has been letting off literary whoopee cushions since school, is a mainstay of the cartoon pages, when not scripting for Dawn French, Harry Enfield and their like. The only consolation, therefore, in the task of detailing the turgid qualities of their latest collaboration is that I’m unlikely to be nominated for Private Eye’s Order of the Brown Nose. Hislop and Newman have found appropriate heroes…

Source: The Times September 27, 2016 15:56 UTC