Ian Hislop

It's been a very, very bizarre year and journalism must feel this.

The implosion of the Labour Party, war in the Middle East, the rise of right-wing parties, a toxic split in the British public and an economic crisis.

Looking back at the stuff Paul wrote for Private Eye, I mean, he would have coped with all of this.

None of it would have surprised him.

And the important thing about Paul is that he would not have despaired, particularly not about journalism.

Paul was, for those who don't really know and imagine he was writing about the time of the Boer War, he worked for a long time for the Daily Mirror and for Private Eye.

And the first thing I did when I was editor was get him back on the team.

He was a great friend of Richard Ingram's and Christopher Booker.

They were all at school together.

And they were that early Private Eye team.

What Paul brought was the focus on journalism.

If you look at how much he wrote about Lockerbie, for example, the air crash and then the

the fake terrorism story and the consequent fallout.

The inflected blood scandal, Paul wrote about that.

There's yet another review of it last week.

None of this goes away.

Miscarriages.

I was reading his Scott report, the arms to Iraq.

Would you believe it?

Britain was exporting arms to a Middle East country and not admitting it.