Kicking against the A-list, and forgettable politicians

 
10 July 2014

Craig Brown is celebrating 25 years of his Private Eye diary this year but is the modern world going too far now? “With this great celebrity mountain that we have now, there are always new people popping up,” says the satirist in an interview with the Ham & High newspaper. “What’s odd, when looking back at the early ones, is that there are quite a lot of people you can barely remember — especially politicians.

“In a funny way, pop stars are more permanent than politicians now. Someone such as Stephen Byers — he was some Blair Cabinet member and you vaguely remember there was some scandal — is huge news for a year and then they disappear.”

However, Brown, who has parodied everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to John Major, says “usually it’s the people you want to offend” who get offended — Mohamed Fayed was one, and Sir Alan Sugar “was definitely upset ... I only found out, from Ian Hislop actually, that he was booked to appear on Have I Got News For You that week and pulled out, citing my parody as the reason.”

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