Ian Hislop and Nick Newman are used to being in the frontline. As editor and cartoonist respectively of satirical bible Private Eye, they have spent many a year dodging metaphorical bullets from an outraged political establishment. As script-writers too, ever since they worked on revues together while at Ardingly College public school in West Sussex (also the alma mater of four Conservative MPs – so far), they have consistently bitten the hand that feeds them. While Hislop is best known as long-standing team captain on satirical TV quiz show, Have I Got News For You, Newman's career as writer and cartoonist has seen his work appear in high-end publications such as Punch and The Spectator. Together as writers, they created the character of gormless toff and old Ardinglyian, Tim Nice-But-Dim, for The Harry Enfield Show on TV, and, among numerous radio works, in 1994 penned Gush, a satire based on the Gulf War and written in the style of Jeffrey Archer. Despite such a collective
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.