Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1994, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My costaway this week is a satirist, as one might expect, his professional calling

attracts abuse, and he's been called among other things a talentless twerp and a malicious

pixie.

Apparently unaffected by these insults, he's twinkled nimbly through a career

that has taken him via Oxford University to three of Britain's most iconocastic

appointments script writer for the lifelike in latex on spitting image team captain of the BBC's

would-be news quiz have I got news for you and for the last seven years editor of

private eye he is Ian Hislop, you said just before you were made, editor of the I,

that it was the best job in the world.

That was when you were 25.

You're now all of 33.

Do you still think so?

Yes, I still think it takes some beating. I did make rather a lot of pompous pronouncements

when I took over saying I will do this job for five years and at that age five

years seemed a very long time and I've now done it for seven and hopefully

people have forgotten that I said that. You also said that you'd reduce the flow of

writs of libel writs but you haven't have you? That was another of my

pronouncements that didn't happen. But you wanted to?

Yes, I have in a sense cut down on the libel bills.

I would defend myself that far.

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