1961 – that was the year that was
Happy 60th birthday, Private Eye!
Some of us knew you when you were young. But a bird’s-eye view is not what’s usually to be found in the magazine’s biographies. Birds – aka dolly-birds – were the handmaids in the Gilead of those times. Trained as shorthand typists, we were considered temporary, pending marriage and babies.
The wind of change – social as well as political – took time to reach the ‘burbs, let alone beyond, but what was happening in central London drew would-be writers, actors, artists and musicians to a fertile rubbish heap in which things grew.
Among the new growth was , founded on 25th October 1961.’s kitty to print the early issues on scrappy, yellow paper, stapled together by hand.
