Book Review: Private Eye’s Bumper Book of Boobs edited by Richard Ingrams
Private Eye is a satire and current events magazine that’s been published in Great Britain since 1961. While their investigative reporting is perhaps more important a contribution to society, they also do a lot of jokes and other humor. One recurring feature has been printing headlines and article clippings from newspapers that have humorous mistakes or connotations.
Thus this 1973 collection (though my copy is the 1982 edition, don’t know when it was last reprinted.) It contains over 190 pages of typos, mismatched photos, awkward wording and people with the same name as celebrities doing things those celebrities hopefully wouldn’t do.
It also contains cartoons by Larry, Ralph Steadman and Bill Tidy illustrating the mental picture some of these pieces suggest.
As you might expect, quite a bit of the humor here is of the “rude chuckle” variety, seeing mildly naughty words or phrases in respectable newspapers. Other ones are a bit more clever. And a few rely on knowledge of particular famous people or in-jokes. A particular target is a newspaper formally named The Guardian, but always referred to by Private Eye as “the Grauniad” due to its hapless proofreading.
Some samples: “FIRE KILLS NINE CALVES IN TORO An 80-year-old man of Kyaka county, Toro died of stab wounds only a few hours after an elephant had trumpled his son to death. Foul play is not suspected.”
“NURSE RAPED By Our Crime Staff”
“How England must wish that Statham were just a little younger! Even at 3, however, his consistent accuracy is without equal, and he sets a magnificent example to the younger men under his command.”
Some references will be opaque to younger or non-British readers, but the majority of pieces are still amusing. There were several volumes of these put out, so you might still be able to find some relatively cheaply even in America. Recommended to the kind of reader who got a chuckle from the title.
