Private Eye Trivia Quiz

Answer: They were at school together at Shrewsbury

British "public" (i.e. expensive private) schools like Shrewsbury (founded in 1551) are generally seen as producing conservative-minded guardians of the status quo, but they also turn out a surprising number of highly articulate critics of the establishment.

Booker, Foot, Ingrams and Rushton were at the school in the early 1950s, and all were involved at some time in editing the school magazine, "The Salopian".

Answer: Lord Gnome

In the magazine's early days, the figure of Lord Gnome was based on old-style press barons like Lord Beaverbrook. Over the years he has developed into a caricature of capitalists in general.

Emmanuel Strobes is his lordship's "amanuensis" who writes his editorials for him. Sir Basil Nardly-Stoads and his Seductive Brethren were one of Peter Cook's bizarre creations in the 1960s, while Spiggy Topes serves to satirize pop music.

Answer: Sir Alec Douglas-Home

A Scottish newspaper inadvertently printed a photograph of Home instead of a local dignitary called Baillie Vass. Thereafter Home became Baillie Vass in the pages of the Eye.

After the Conservative defeat in the general election of 1964, the party turned against Home. The Eye, faced with the prospect of losing one of its favourite figures of fun, asked its readers to rally in ostensible support of Sir Alec. A good few readers duly turned up outside the party's headquarters in Smith Square, bearing banners with ambiguous slogans like "Conservatives Deserve Alec's Leadership!"

Answer: Barry McKenzie

The strip did a lot to bring Barry Humphries to notice in Britain. He wrote the text and Garland drew the pictures. Barry McKenzie was an Australian innocent abroad in the swinging Britain of the 1960s, and the strip introduced readers to a wide range of colourful Australian slang (some of it, I suspect, was invented for the occasion) as well as popularizing Foster's beer. After a long run, editor Richard Ingrams took exception to the increasing sexual explicitness of the strip and publication ceased.

The strip has appeared in book form, and also inspired a couple of films.

Answer: the crossword

Driberg was Member of Parliament for Maldon in Essex from 1942 to 1955, and for Barking from 1959 to 1974. He died in 1976, shortly after being elevated to the peerage as Lord Bradwell.

His first crossword appeared in the Eye in 1969, and he adopted the pseudonym Tiresias in 1972, when he was beginning to lose his sight (in Greek mythology Tiresias was a seer who was struck blind by Hera or Athena).

Today in 2007 the crossword is provided by Eddie James, a professional crossword compiler, who uses the name Cyclops. As in Driberg's day, it is still notable for profanity and sexual innuendo in its clues and answers.

Answer: St Albion's Parish News

Ever since Harold Wilson came to power in 1964, the Eye has featured satirical columns pretending to comment on the governmental scene from a source close to the centre.

It was known that Harold Wilson's wife Mary kept a diary, although so far as I know it was never published. Private Eye's spoof diary portrayed her (rather unfairly, perhaps) as a naïve housewife reporting (and unwittingly blowing the gaff) on goings-on that she didn't understand.

When Edward Heath took the helm in 1970, he was portrayed as the bullying managing director of Heathco, who was forever blaming the workforce and his foreign suppliers for everything that went wrong.

Mrs Wilson resumed her diary during the Wilson/Callaghan years of the later 1970s. When Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minster, we had eleven years of "Dear Bill" letters, purportedly written by her husband Denis to an old drinking and golfing companion. For many readers, these were one of the greatest pieces of satire ever to appear in the magazine.

"The Secret Diary of John Major, Aged 47¾" took a fairly conventional view of Major as a small-minded grey man.

The advent of New Labour in 1997 gave us "St Albion's Parish News", picturing Tony Blair as the "new broom" vicar of an Anglican parish.

Answer: Parliament and politics

HP Sauce is a popular bottled brown sauce in the UK. It has a picture of the Houses of Parliament on its label. About the time that Harold Wilson became Prime Minister, his wife Mary said in a newspaper interview that he was apt to drown his food in HP Sauce.

It was probably inevitable that "Private Eye", starting up its Parliamentary column around that time, should choose "HP Sauce" as the title.

Answer: E. J. Thribb

"Poetry Corner" invariably consists of an "in memoriam" poem to someone who has recently died. The poem begins, with liturgical predictability, with the words "So, farewell then ...". "Poetry Corner" has been running for some years, but Master Thribb's age is unchanged at seventeen and three-quarters.

Ron Knee is the "tight-lipped, ashen-faced" manager of Neasden United Football Club, and Sid Bonkers and his wife Doris are the club's only known supporters. Dave Spart is an old-style left-wing activist.

Answer: Queen Elizabeth II

Yes, Her Majesty is Brenda. Similarly, Prince Philip is Keith, the Prince of Wales is Brian and the late Princess Margaret was Yvonne.

Wikipedia thinks that these names were applied to the Royals in the wake of a 1969 television documentary on the Royal Family, which attempted to "break down barriers" between them and us, but resulted in the Family being seen as little more than characters in a soap opera. Other sources allege that these nicknames are or were irreverently used by Buckingham Palace servants.

Answer: Sylvie Krin

Reporting of the Royal Family's activities in the media is routinely compared to a soap-opera script, but it can equally well be seen as a run-of-the-mill romantic novel, and "Private Eye" has produced several examples of novelistic treatments of the family's love affairs.

"Sylvie Krin" is a play on Silvikrin, the brand-name of a greasy hair-care product like Brylcreem.