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‘Hell is Empty’ and the Trumps are here: New paintings by Sig waller

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November 2019: Artist Sig Waller garnered considerable praise and caused some controversy when she exhibited a few of her latest paintings at the annual Saarland Association of Artists (SKB) Exhibition in Germany. Waller’s latest work was titled Hell is Empty and featured gruesome, powerful, and bitingly satiric paintings of the Trump family and their associates.

The title Hell is Empty comes from William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, when the spirit Ariel recounts the events of those shipwrecked on Prospero’s island:

...All but mariners
Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,
Then all afire with me. The king’s son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring—then, like reeds, not hair—
Was the first man that leaped, cried, “Hell is empty
And all the devils are here.”

Waller’s paintings makes reference to The Tempest together with pop culture, the occult, and movies like Rosemary’s Baby. Waller’s devils are very real and they rule our lives through politics religion and the media. These people and organisations we are supposedly meant to trust, but they are in fact devils intent on our subjugation and destruction. Their presence means there is no mercy and they intend to make devils of us all.

Waller was born in Swansea, south Wales. Her father was an American historian “who dressed like a tramp,” her mother a German psychologist and housewife. The family foraged for food, brewed ale, collected driftwood and threw wild parties. At eighteen Waller moved to London where she studied Fine Art and Art History at Goldsmiths College. After graduation, she worked in animation, music promos, and film. In 1995, Waller moved to Berlin where she started painting. After the birth of her son Sky in 2002, Waller moved to Brighton, England, where she studied for another Fine Art degree at the city’s university. Since 2010, Waller’s work has been exhibited in galleries across Europe and America. She currently resides in Saarbrücken, Germany. See more of Sig Waller’s work here.
 
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See more of Sig Waller’s work, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.12.2020
05:23 am
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There’s a book of ‘beautiful’ (but strictly unauthorized) poetry by Donald Trump and it’s a hoot
11.13.2017
10:47 am
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Apparently, Donald Trump has unwittingly produced a book of poetry. Not just your run-of-the-mill rhyming couplets or iambic pentameter, but short sentences artfully clipped from speeches, Tweets, and interviews and then edited by Rob Sears. The resulting work reveal the “little known alternative fact that the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, has long been a remarkable poet.”

Who knew? you may well ask. Nobody, that is, until now.

With The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump, renowned fiction and comedy writer Sears hopes to redress this glaring oversight by the literary world and show that Trump is no slouch, no dunderhead, “no fabulous whiner,” when it comes to the aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language, but “a modern-day Basho or Larkin” with smaller hands.

As Sears explains in his introduction to this “groundbreaking” collection of verse:

The greatest misapprehension about DJT corrected by this volume, however, may be the idea that he sees money and power as ends in themselves. In fact, just as Wilfred Owen turned his wartime experiences into poetry, and Slyvia Plath found the dark beauty in her own depression, Trump is able to transform his unique experiences of being a winner into 24-karat verse. He didn’t build a huge real-estate empire for the billions; he did it so he could write poems…

Not that anyone normal would ever recognize this from Trump’s rambling, incoherent, monosyllabic outpourings, but somehow Sears has toiled heroically to cut and reorder the President’s pronouncements into “a trove of beautiful verse waiting to be discovered.”

I can see that you don’t believe him, or me. Well, here are just a few of the many delights waiting to be discovered in The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump:

I won!

Well, we’ve had some disasters, but this is the worst

Bad hombres

I’ve known some bad dudes
I’ve been at parties
They want to do serious harm
I’ve seen and I’ve watched things like with guns
I know a lot of tough guys but they’re not smart
We’re dealing with people like animals

But they are the folks I like the best—by far!

I am the least racist person there is

I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks
I remained strong for Tiger Woods during his difficult
period
Oprah, I love Oprah. Oprah would always be my first choice
Kanye West—I love him
I think Eminem is fantastic, and most people think I
wouldn’t like Eminem
And did you know my name is in more black songs than any
other name in hip-hop?
You are the racist, not I

I respect women, I love women, I cherish women

Vagina is expensive
No more apologies—take the offensive!

Hot little girl in high school

I’m a very compassionate person (with a very high IQ)
Just think, in a couple of years I’ll be dating you
It must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees
Come here, I’ll show how life works. Please.

We’ve got to stop the stupid

You know what uranium is, right?
It’s a thing called nuclear weapons and other things like lots
of things that are done with uranium including some bad
things
I have to explain this to these people, they don’t even understand basic
physics, basic mathematics, whatever you call it
I mean, they’re like stupid

Look at the way I’ve been treated lately

I should have been TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year
Just like I should have gotten the Emmy for The Apprentice
I should have easily won the Trump University case
I should have won New York state but I didn’t
I unfairly get audited by the I.R.S. almost every
single year
No politician in history—and I say this with great surety—
has been treated worse or more unfairly

The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump is published by Canongate.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Donald Trump portrait made from 500 pictures of dicks (NSFW-ish)
Donald Trump bong
Donald Trump urinal

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.13.2017
10:47 am
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Greedheads, preying priests and oligarchs: The politically-charged surrealist paintings of Ole Fick

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‘Red Alert.’
 
You may have heard of Postman Pat or rather, “Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat and his black and white cat.” If you know what I’m talking about, then you’ll know how goddamned difficult it is to say “Postman Pat” without singing the show’s catchy little jingle.

Anyway, Postman Pat is a kids’ series on British TV that’s been running long enough for the big-nosed puppet Pat to claim his pension. It’s been so successful the series has been sold to who knows how many different countries across the world. One day, no doubt, there will a gathering of all the world’s bigwigs at the UN who will suddenly agree on global peace and prosperity after bursting into several rousing renditions of the Postman Pat theme tune.

Ole Fick is the Danish actor who provides the voice for the series in Denmark where it’s known as Postmand Per. Fick has voiced a whole bunch of kids TV and movie imports as far back as Disney’s The Aristocats,. As an actor, he’s starred in quite a few big screen movies and acclaimed TV series.

But acting is just one of the many things with which Fick (b. 1948) has achieved great success in his life. He’s also well-known as a comic who has worked alongside comedy duo Monrad & Rislund—think Rowan and Martin or Morecambe and Wise. He writes kids’ books and draws cartoons. But Fick’s probably best known in Denmark as singer and guitarist with the jazz-funk-prog rock band Burnin Red Ivanhoe—who coincidentally celebrate their 50th anniversary this year.

If this weren’t enough to make you want to re-evaluate your own productivity, Fick is a painter who since 2010 has been exhibiting his surreal and satirical paintings across Denmark to considerable success. Fick paints pictures of the various kinds of deluded men who seem to have an overly large part in running the world. The men who feast on havoc and chaos, exploitation and greed. Fick’s paintings are chronicles of the world in which we all live—between the devourer and the devoured—where manners and etiquette don’t soften the damage done. See more of Fick’s work here.
 
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‘Something is Rotten.’
 
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‘Soft Cut.’
 
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‘Epiphany.’
 
See more of Ole Fick’s paitnings, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.10.2017
08:36 am
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Modern Life Sucks: Satirical illustrations of our brave new world
03.22.2017
11:58 am
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We’re all owned. We’re bought, bartered, liked, sold, conned, shared and used everyday to make other people money. We’re all well and truly fucked. Welcome to the world of Luis Quiles.

Luis Quiles, aka Gunsmithcat, is a Spanish artist whose corrsucating satirical ilustrations take no prisoners. No one is safe. The right. The left. The good. The bad. Quiles takes them all down. He specifically targets the dehumanizing nature of capitalism, terrorism, and religion. His work is highly controversial. It’s been deemed offensive. But we shouldn’t be offended by Luis’s drawings rather we should be offended at the hard reality he depicts.
 
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See more of Luis Quiles’ work, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.22.2017
11:58 am
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Pleasure Goat: The art of the fake magazine cover
02.23.2017
08:26 am
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A fake magazine designed by Sean Tejaratchi.
 
Many of you may be well acquainted with the brilliant work of graphic designer and writer Sean Tejaratchi—and as it had sadly been a while since I had visited his awesome Liar Town USA Tumblr. When I did I found it hard to stop clicking on his ludicrous faux books and other odd yet authentic looking magazines and found myself wishing that there was a website that featured photos of things that Marilyn Monroe kicked.

As couldn’t stop yucking it up over at Liar Town USA I thought I’d share a few of my favorite fictional magazines that Tejaratchi put together, most of which center around inappropriate knitwear and unexpected orgasms. Two things that when they appear in the same sentence sound like a great premise for a publication, don’t you think? Someone, please get on that immediately. That said many of the images that follow are NSFW.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.23.2017
08:26 am
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This is where it’s f*ckin’ at: Classic Penguin book covers get subversive makeovers
01.27.2017
10:20 am
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‘This is Where Its Fuckin At (At Least It Used to Be),’ artist Harland Miller’s take on what I wish was a real vintage Penguin book.

Before comedian Scott Rogowsky took to the New York Subway with his hilariously subversive “fake” book covers such as Ass Eating Made Simple, English novelist and artist Harland Miller was busy creating a series of dubious and inflammatory paintings based on the classic covers of vintage of Penguin Books in 2001. And like the books Rogowsky used to shock weary NY subway riders, I’d love to imagine stumbling across a vintage paperback with the title Health and Safety is Killing Bondage. Don’t laugh, it could happen.

Many of our Dangerous Minds readers are likely already acquainted with Miller’s contributions to the world of literature. His 2000 novel, Slow down Arthur, Stick to Thirty centered around a young child who sets off to explore the northern parts of England with a David Bowie impersonator. Even the cover of Miller’s debut is worth bragging about as it includes a small image of Bowie as Ziggy clad in ski gear embroidered on a sweater. The paintings Miller composed for his Penguin Book series are huge—perhaps over six feet in length. His nostalgic works are lovingly realistic thanks to his skilled painting technique by which he is able to create the tactile appearance of wear and tear on a book’s spine, or the distressing of color due to age, sun damage or mistreatment. Miller’s caustic sense of humor is on full display with these faux covers and of the many images I’ve included in this post below, I can guarantee there is something that everyone will identify with. Which helps to reinforce what a treasure Mr. Miller is.

Seemingly unstoppable, Miller has kept churning out more of his charmingly debaucherous book covers. The artist has sold many of his original paintings, and when he does they go for anywhere between $5,000 to more than $30,000. Some contain language and concepts that are slightly NSFW.
 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.27.2017
10:20 am
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Hara Kiri: The magazine so ‘stupid and evil’ it was banned by the French government
04.27.2016
08:46 am
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The cover of Hara Kiri magazine #132
The cover of ‘Hara Kiri’ magazine #132.The text reads: ‘What young people want? Eat the old.’
 
French adult satire magazine Hara Kiri, was one of a few magazine published back in the early 1960s that helped further along the proliferation of adult-oriented satire magazines like its American counterparts MAD and National Lampoon. Since the European outlook on humor was, let’s say, much more “open-minded” than in the U.S., Hara Kiri was able to blaze a trail bound straight for the gutter when it came to its unique brand of depraved comedic imagery.
 
A page from Hara Kiri magazine depicting a BDSM equipment salesperson
A page from Hara Kiri magazine depicting mother introducing her young daughter to BDSM ‘equipment.’ The sign reads ‘The Little Whore.’

So boundary-pushing were the staff of Hara Kiri (that for a short time included an illustrator revered by Fellini, Stan Lee and Hayao Miyazaki, Jean Henri Gaston Giraud who drew cartoons for the journal under the name “Moebius”), that it was banned from being sold to minors by the French government after the magazine lampooned the death of former President of the French Republic, Charles de Gaulle in November of 1970—suggesting that the press coverage his demise was excessive compared to the news reports surrounding the deaths of 146 people (most of them just teenagers) at the infamous fire at the French disco, Club Cinq-Sept eight days earlier.

Full of sharp and demented political satire, and gleefully dark, observational humor (such as portraying a child being usefully reappropriated as a broom, or the mother introducing her young daughter to BDSM equipment, pictured above), Hara Kiri never stopped going after organized political or religious institutions in the most inexplicable ways. To this day the decades-old images still resonate the rebellious, non-conformist spirit Hara Kiri embodied during its heyday.

I’ve included many images from the strange covers of the magazine (who enjoyed referring to itself as a “Journal bête et méchant” or “Stupid and evil journal”), as well as some of Hara Kiri’s perplexing pages from the magazine. What I wasn’t able to include in this post were some of the magazine’s best known images that are simply so perverse it’s just not possible for me to show them to you here in a family publication. But that’s what Google’s for, right?
 
The cover of Hara Kiri #186
The cover of Hara Kiri #186. The text reads (in part) ‘Pope condemns hammer blows to the mouth.’
 
A page from the French magazine Hara Kiri
A page from Hara Kiri. The text when translated reads: ‘Your child is stupid? Make it a broom!’
 
The cover of Hara Kiri #17
The cover of Hara Kiri #17. Text reads: ‘Beat your wife.’
 
Much more from the deviant pages of Hara Kiri, some which might be considered NSFW, follow after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.27.2016
08:46 am
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Donald Trump versus Cassetteboy is pure evil genius
03.01.2016
12:28 pm
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“This could be the end of the world,” says Donald Trump in Cassetteboy’s perfect satirical cut ‘n’ splice of the Presidential hopeful’s true political ambitions.

Editing together seemingly innocent and unrelated sequences from Trump’s TV series The Apprentice, Cassetteboy has revealed the ugly truth about the billionaire megalomaniac and his ambitions for world domination…

As this comic nightmare suggests…“nobody is going to escape….” Watch before it gets pulled!
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.01.2016
12:28 pm
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World leaders sitting on the toilet

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Bringing world leaders down their basic bodily functions Their Daily Duty is a series of photomontages by digital artist Cristina Guggeri. The images present imagined intimate moments of President Obama, President Putin, Her Majesty the Queen and even Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama, all seated on the toilet performing their own “daily duty.”

Cristina (aka Kyrdy) made the images in collaboration with Area Shoot, and while they certainly rub our nose in our shared human frailty, they are also a reminder to the “sitters” of their moral responsibility in governance and leadership.

More of Cristina’s work can be found here.
 
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More leaders on the throne, after the jump….
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.15.2015
09:53 am
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Something to offend everyone: New Iraqi comedy show has Devil and a Jew giving birth to ISIS
09.15.2014
03:10 pm
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A promo for a new Iraqi satirical TV comedy shows the Devil (in red onesie with pointy a tail) and a Jewish woman (that would be her sporting the tiara and the overlarge Star of David) coming together to spawn an egg from which hatches looney tunes ISIS party leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, mockingly referred to as the “ISIS-ling.”

The promo for the new series The Superstitious State was posted online by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which described the video as having been broadcast on Al-Iraqiyya TV on September 9th and several more times since.

The title is a play on the words “khilafa” (“caliphate”) and “khirafa” (“superstition”). There are also characters based on Dracula, The Joker, a root’em toot’em Yankee cowboy, one who is apparently supposed to be Joseph Stalin and one based on Sheikha Mozah, the fashion plate wife of the former Emir of Qatar.
 
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Before we assume too much about the aims of this satire, it’s worth noting that Arab news channels are spreading the conspiracy theory that claims ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a Jewish Mossad agent known as Simon Elliot, which might be what they’re getting at: Of course it can all be blamed on the Jews (and John McCain!) Via Shalom Life:

Last week, former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro penned an editorial published in the country’s primary media outlet, claiming that Mossad, Israel’s central intelligence agency, and American senator John McCain conspired together to create the Islamic State.

A Dutch minister, Yasmina Haifi, was also suspended after tweeting that the “Zionists” created ISIS, echoing the sentiments of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the Palestinian Authority’s official publication, which basically argued the same notion.

Mohseen Rezaee, a former Iranian military commander, following in line with Castro’s comments, also blamed the birth of ISIS on Mossad, saying that the Zionists are trying to eliminate Islam by making Muslims kill one another. Iraqi Ayatollah Sayed Mortada Al-Qazwini claimed that ISIS is “a Jewish Israeli organization, established to tear apart the land of Muslims.”

“What’s the point?” I hear you ask.. well, who knows? It seems all will be revealed in later episodes. But in answer to any questions over whether this satirical show will have any influence one way or the other, we should recall what the great Peter Cook once said about “those wonderful Berlin cabarets… which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War.”
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.15.2014
03:10 pm
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The BEST royal baby headline yet


 
Via satirical magazine Private Eye (obviously.)

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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07.24.2013
06:13 am
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Breaking the Illusion: brilliant comic strip satire ‘The War On Magic’


 
This biting, and brilliant, comic strip satire goes to show the inherent fallacy of any state-sanctioned “War On A Noun.”

It’s the work of the British musician and artist Darren Cullen, and you can find more of his output at the site Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives.

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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04.25.2013
09:38 am
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‘Private Eye’: Vintage documentary on the ‘thorn in the side’ of the British Establishment

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1976 was a difficult year for the satirical and current affairs magazine Private Eye.

This was the year its then editor, Richard Ingrams received over 60 writs from disgruntled billionaire businessman Sir James Goldsmith (aka Sir Jams Fishpaste, as the Eye called him). Goldsmith had objected to 3 stories the Eye had published about him—one in particular that suggested Fishpaste had helped his friend, Lord Lucan escape Britain from a murder charge.

Goldsmith and Lucan were bonded by several things, one in particular was a belief Communists had infiltrated western media, and Britain was on the verge of a Communist revolution. It led Fishpaste and Lucan to discuss the pros and cons of a Fascist military coup over “smoked salmon and lamb cutlets.” Their conversation reflected the paranoid, Boy’s Own fantasies of a very privileged and ruthless class.

But “Goldsmith was angry, as well as rich,” as one of Private Eye‘s lawyers, Geoffrey Bindman later explained:

“[Goldsmith] set out to destroy the little magazine that had presumed to offend him. He sued….But he spread the net far beyond Private Eye. In a novel exercise in overkill, he issued separate writs against all the distributors and wholesalers of the magazine. There were over 60 writs. Private Eye faced a huge financial burden. It was liable to indemnify all those whom Goldsmith had chosen to sue.

The first task was to reassure the recipients of these writs that the indemnity would be honoured. Private Eye lacked the resources but had a lot of supporters. A drive to raise money began, inspirationally named the Goldenballs Fund.

 
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Peter Cook and Richard Ingrams check an early edition of ‘Private Eye’
 
The legal action brought considerable media attention, and in October, the BBC made a documentary about Ingrams and Private Eye:

“Richard Ingrams’ offices are at 34 Greek Street. A former haunt of prostitutes and drug addicts. Now the main problem is writ service. Rented at sixty-pounds-a-week, the building is small and dilapidated, but it’s all that Private Eye can afford. The magazine runs on a shoe-string budget. It comes out once a fortnight, price 20 pence, and has a circulation of 90,000.”

Ingrams may have looked like an unassuming university lecturer—dressed in a corduroy jacket, with a Viyella shirt and tie, but he was (surprisingly) a reformed drinker and smoker, who believed in God and played the organ at the local church. He was, more importantly, a superb and strongly principled editor, who understood Private Eye‘s role:

“It has to be anarchic. It has to be prepared to hit everyone—even its friends. As long as you attack everybody indiscriminately, completely indiscriminately you are safe. Immediately you start taking sides, or sticking-up for somebody, or keeping quiet, then you get into difficulties.”

Under his editorship, Private Eye had a golden decade in the seventies. It attracted some of the very best writers, journalists and artists, who brought an excellence other magazines (Punch) could only dream about. There was Auberon Waugh who produced an hilarious and corruscating diary; Paul Foot who delivered brilliant investigative reports; Peter Cook offered memorable comic contributions; and “Grovel” the Eye‘s (in)famous gossip column written by the late, Daily Mail diarist, Nigel Dempster, who claimed:

“We live in a banana peel society, where it gives no-one greater pleasure than to see someone trip up.”

Not all of the Eye writers were happy with Dempster’s column, Christopher Booker thought it edged too close to exaggeration, without thought of the damage done.

This lack of thought had led a 100 people to sue Private Eye by ‘76, which had depleted much of the magazine’s profits. But then the Eye was never really that interested in profits—it was a product of those patrician attitudes Public Schools can afford to inspire.

The magazine’s original quartet Richard Ingrams, Christopher Booker, Paul Foot and William Rushton had all met at Shrewsbury School, where they had produced their own teenage satirical magazine—a first issue was covered with hessian and embedded with free seeds. After school, university, where Ingrams hoped to become a leading comic actor. It didn’t happen, and the Famous 4 regrouped to produce the very first Private Eye in 1961, from typescript, Letra-set and cow-gum. It is interesting to note how this amateur, home-made style has remained very much the template for the Eye ever since.

This new magazine chimed with the so-called satire boom, in which Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller conquered the world with Beyond the Fringe, and producer Ned Sherrin made a star of David Frost (who Booker later described as a man with “..a peculiar ambition to be world-famous simply for the sake of being world-famous”) on the highly successful That Was The Week That Was—which proved so successful it was canceled after 2 series.

The Eye continued long after both these shows and the satire boom had run out of laughs, in part much aided by the backing of Peter Cook, who helped finance the magazine until his death in 1995.

What makes Private Eye essential is the ephemeral nature of its exceedingly good journalism. As Auberon Waugh once wrote (in the introduction to Another Voice—his essential collection of writing for The Spectator), “Timeless journalism is bad journalism”:

“The essence of journalism is that it should stimulate its readers for a moment, possibly open their minds to some alternative perception of events, and then be thrown away, with all its clever conundrums, its prophecies and comminations, in the great wastepaper basket of history.”

Though it has been occasionally wrong (MMR comes to mind) and wrong-headed (comic attitudes towards race, women, and gays have been questionable), Private Eye is indispensable and essential reading for those with an interest in the follies of politics and business of contemporary life, or the strong tradition of good investigation journalism, which most newspapers appear to have abandoned long ago. This is what made, and still makes Private Eye truly great.

Sir Jams Fishpaste launched his own magazine Talbot!, which soon disappeared without trace, before forming the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Margarine Party, a popular movement that failed to be..er..popular. He died in 1997.

Richard Ingrams quit Private Eye in 1986, and appointed alleged schoolboy Ian Hislop as Editor, who has managed the magazine with great success ever since.

Ingrams started a new magazine The Oldie in 1992, which has been described as “the new Punch and the new New Yorker,” which he continues to successfully edit today. Richard Ingrams is 94.

Check Private Eye online here.
 

 
With thanks to NellyM
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.13.2013
09:09 pm
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Motherbanger: the music of Chris Morris
07.06.2012
07:51 am
Topics:
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I think we can all agree that Chris Morris is a comedic genius, right?

His work, from BBC Radio’s On The Hour and The Chris Morris Music Show in the early 90s, through The Day Today, Brass Eye and Nathan Barley on TV, and all the way up to his most recent work, Four Lions, is both howlingly funny and the pinnacle of biting satire.

One of the reasons his work is so powerful is the attention to detail, from the small linguistic tics to the perfectly-framed, over-the-top computer graphics. But in particular, for me, it’s his use music that is most impressive. Morris can simultaneously rip the piss out of a tune or a band while lodging a brand new melody in the style of that act permanently into your brain. That’s no mean feat.

While Chris Morris’ musical works are never really foregrounded in his films and shows, they are definitely worthy of attention in their own right. (Heads up WARP - why not put out a compilation of Morris’ musical satires?) So, after a discussion with a friend that was sparked by the discovery of an American band non-ironically named “Blouse”, I decided to compile the best of Morris’ musical parodies for DM.

A major tip of the hat is due to the YouTube uploader FourJamLions, who has uploaded quite a bit of Morris’ music, though some of it is not embeddable on other sites. Here is FourJamLions’ compiled clip of the best musical moments from the classic series Brass Eye. This clip includes the priceless Pulp parody “Blouse” (with Morris playing the lead singer “Purves”) singing an ode to serial child killer Myra Hindley. After the jump there’s more of Morris’ musical monstrosities, but if you need some bizarre-but-familiar aural refreshment this Friday, here’s a great introduction:

BRASS EYE Music (inc Pulp parody BLOUSE “Me Oh Myra”)
 

 
After the jump, music from The Day Today, Brass Eye, Nathan Barley, and The Chris Morris Music Show…
 

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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07.06.2012
07:51 am
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Tim Minchin’s ‘Woody Allen Jesus’ - the song banned by British TV

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Tim Minchin portrait by gtgauvin

Australian comedian, piano whizz and enthusiastic exponent of guyliner Tim Minchin has had a satirical song of his called “Woody Allen Jesus” cut from the broadcast of one of the UK biggest chat shows, The Jonathan Ross Show. Minchin had been asked specifically by Ross and his producers to write and perform a Christmas ditty for the show, but when an advanced tape was passed to the station’s director of television, Peter Fincham, it was decided that the song needed to be dropped.

Minchin is miffed, and rightly so. Are well living in the 21st century or not? Does freedom of speech and thought (and music) exist in this country or is the Christian religion in such a dire state that it needs to ban anything that questions its relevance? Actually, that might be the case. Despite David Cameron’s particularly idiotic and toadying claims that the UK is a “Christian country”, the figures simply do not back this up, as this report in the ultra-conservative Daily Mail shows: “Number of Christians is down 10% in just five years.”

Minchin writes on his blog:

Being Christmas, I thought it would be fun to do a song about Jesus, but being TV, I knew it would have to be gentle. The idea was to compare him to Woody Allen (short, Jewish, philosophical, a bit hesitant), and expand into redefining his other alleged attributes using modern, popular-culture terminology.

It’s not a particularly original idea, I admit, but it’s quite cute. It’s certainly not very contentious, but even so, compliance people and producers and lawyers all checked my lyrics long before the cameras rolled. As always with these bespoke writing jobs, I was really stressed for about 3 days, and almost chucked it in the bin 5 times, and freaked out that it wasn’t funny and all that boring shit that people like me go through when we’re lucky enough to have with a big audience with high expectations. And if I’m honest, it ain’t a world-changing bit of comedy. Regardless…

And then someone got nervous and sent the tape to ITV’s director of television, Peter Fincham.

And Peter Fincham demanded that I be cut from the show.

He did this because he’s scared of the ranty, shit-stirring, right-wing press, and of the small minority of Brits who believe they have a right to go through life protected from anything that challenges them in any way.

Yesterday I wrote a big rant about comedy and risk and conservatism; about the fact that my joke has no victim; about sacredness (oh God, not again!) and about the importance of laughing at dumb but pervasive ideas. But I trashed it because it’s boring and takes it all too seriously. It’s hardly the end of the world.

But I have to admit I’m really fucking disappointed.

It’s 2011. The appropriate reaction to people who think Jesus is a supernatural being is mild embarrassment, sighing tolerance and patient education.

And anger when they’re being bigots.

Oh, and satire. There’s always satire.

Jonathan Ross is no stranger to controversy within the British media - in 2008 he and Russell Brand found themselves in deep shit after a phone call to Andrew Sachs was deemed to have gone “too far” by the tabloid press. Those ever-original and forward thinking people at the tabloids christened the incident “Sachsgate” and the outrage that was drummed up was enough to have both comedians ousted by their employer at the time, the BBC (one was suspended and the other quit.) This background hum of potential “outrage” may have been enough for Fincham to pull Minchin’s segment on the Ross show, but now it looks like a whole new controversy based on freedom of speech and expression is blowing up in ITV’s face. Oh dear.

Here is Tim Minchin performing “Woody Allen Jesus” on The Jonathan Ross Show:
 

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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12.23.2011
10:03 am
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