Ian Hislop has been editing Private Eye for too long

Who says so? I'm talking about the Eye's former editor Richard Ingrams, stoopid!!!??!!

From the Press Gazette:

Private Eye co-founder Richard Ingrams believes Ian Hislop has been editor of the magazine for “too long”. 

This was Ingrams’ response when asked how long his successor had been in the editor’s chair at the title. 

Ingrams, who appointed a 26-year-old Hislop as editor when he stepped down in 1986, told Press Gazette he admires what Hislop has done at the Eye but that he is a “great believer in retiring”. 

“I think the danger of him staying on is that the options become less and less and less,” he said. “He should at least now be thinking, ‘who is going to take over?’”... 

He also suggested that it might be time for Hislop to start looking elsewhere on television.“I can’t understand how anyone can go on being on Have I Got News For You for so long,” he said. 

“I would be sick of it after about ten years. I’d get up and do something else. But he can do it. He can remain fresh on that. I couldn’t do it at all.”

Is he right?

The Press Gazette ends this story by telling us that "Private Eye’s average fortnightly sale of 224,796 makes it the UK’s most popular news magazine". So Hislop must be doing something right, even if you do wonder how many rival news magazines there are these days.

I once wrote that:

Ian Hislop took over a magazine that reflected the prejudices of its previous editor. Richard Ingrams was essentially a Tory Anarchist with a few left-wing notions that he got from his great friend Paul Foot thrown in. ...

The Ingrams mixture worked and produced a popular magazine, though quite why it worked was always a bit of a mystery. It was certainly a mystery to Hislop, who seems wary of tampering with the Ingrams formula. with the result that Private Eye now appears increasingly, er, formulaic.

Perhaps part of the Eye's appeal is precisely that it is the same every time. But while I still value its reporting and gossip, its humour pages do seem stale. Perhaps it needs some new contributors, if not a new editor?