Frankly, if you're interested in the evolution of British politics and society and haven't at least a nodding acquaintance with the City commentary of 'Slicker', the poetical works of EJ Thribb (aged 17-and-a-half), the agricultural updates of 'Muckspreader', the architectural ones of 'Piloti', the investigative journalism of the late Paul Foot – and the very much current Francis Wheen – and the parodies by Craig Brown, then you've no real business being here at all. I make no apology for lacing this review with some of the in-jokes that Private Eye has established as its stock-in-trade during the past half-century. Indeed, of the latter – who tried to snow the peskily truth-seeking Eye under with a blizzard of litigation during the early 90s, as his publishing empire sank into the murky waters of its own gross turpitude – it might almost be said that Lord Gnome stood behind him on the deck of his yacht and gave him a hefty shove. Recipients of this inky-black spot include stellar egotists such as Piers Moron and Andrew 'Brillo Pad' Neill (a deliberate misspelling of both their last names is rigorously enforced Eye house style) rampaging financiers such as the late Sir 'Jams' Goldsmith and 'Tiny' Rowland press barons such as the Dirty Digger and the late 'Cap'n Bob' Maxwell.

To respond to a guying from the Eye is, as anyone in British public life should know, a very stupid thing to do, calling forth the well-attested-to 'Curse of Gnome'. I have never, ever considered cancelling my subscription – to do so would be beyond infra dig. What I'm trying to say is that the Eye and I have form, and when I grew big enough not simply to be a reader and emulator but also a target of its pasquinades, I confess I felt nothing but – as the late, lamented Peter Cook, the organ's one-time proprietor, would've put it, in character as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling – 'stupefying pride'. I don't think I got that close to being expelled for my shameless guying of teachers, revelations of their eccentricities and outright malfeasance, but it was made fairly clear that things would go badly for me if I didn't desist. My pedagogues at secondary school also took a dim view of the Eye-inspired satire rag I photocopied and distributed, and which was named – in an homage to Dave Spart, their parody Trotskyite columnist – 'The Alternative Voice'. As I recall it depicted Lord Longford – known for, among other things, his zealous campaign against pornography – walking past a couple of sniggering schoolboys, one of whom is whispering to the other, apropos of the bare-domed peer: 'They say it makes you go bald.' Needless to say, my teacher took a dim view of this decal, the creator of which I'm ashamed to say I can't remember, although it may have been the incomparable McLachlan, just one of the many great cartoonists to have found a home at the Eye over the years. I've been with the Eye for nearly four of its five decades – I remember cutting out and pasting a cartoon clipped from its pages on to a school exercise book in 1972, when I was 12. Still, this could be because I knew a fair bit about it to begin with, and Macqueen's book has only filled in the blanks.

H aving read Adam Macqueen's commendably exhaustive encyclopaedia of Private Eye, the British satirical fortnightly, I now feel I know rather more about Lord Gnome's organ than I wish to.

Privateeyes review