Private Eye editor Ian Hislop with Peter Geoghegan, joint winner of the award named after Paul Foot

IAN Hislop was on fine form as he introduced the Paul Foot Awards for investigative and campaigning journalism at BAFTA studios.

At the annual event last week, now running for more than 20 years, the Private Eye editor began his speech: “We are here to encourage young journalists, which is what Michael Gove said in this week’s Private Eye when I asked him why he attended Spearmint Rhino opening night at the Windmill, Soho.

“He said he was keen to encourage young journalists to write, and so thought it would be a good idea to go and see a strip show.

“As excuses go, that’s right up there in the Murrell degree.”

He added: “The great thing about journalism is that, while it may take a long time, you can still print it out and read it later.”

He then read out an article from 2009 in the Eye that questioned why Peter Mandelson had been talking to Jeffrey Epstein about internal government affairs.

On the more recent Mandelson revelations, he said: “It allowed us to run a joke that would have amused Paul Foot,” he said.

“Paul wrote a book about Shelley [the poet] and we had a very niche cartoon of a statue in the desert, with just the legs and a pair of underpants, called ‘Ozy-Mandyas’. And on the pedestal it says ‘Look on my underpants, ye mighty and despair’ … which I think very well links early socialist writing, journalism and a very cheap joke.”

Paul Foot

The awards were set up after Paul, who worked for the Eye, Guardian and Daily Mirror and lived in West Hampstead for decades, died in Stansted Airport in 2004.

Mr Hislop told how Paul had brought a new focus on hard-hitting journalism to the Eye that had been set up as a satirical magazine by his friend Richard Ingrams.

“The great thing about Paul is that he took it all incredibly seriously, but he wanted it to be fun,” said Mr Hislop. “He was passionate about journalism, but he wanted it to be enter­taining. It had to be accessible. He could make you sad, laugh, furious, but he made you care, and that is what’s difficult.

“He knew that you had to find a story. Write it well. Then get someone to publish it.

“And if you look at the different ways in which people on the list tonight have got these stories out, it is extra­ordinary – particularly for someone raised in mainstream journalism – what people are doing now to make it possible.”

Unlike recent years, the shortlist was dominated by independently published journalism, funded largely through subscription-based projects, rather than traditional sales or advertising.

The winners were Peter Geoghegan and Khadija Sharife from Democracy for Sale for the entry How Labour Together hired a PR firm to discredit journalists.

Mr Hislop said: “When people say you can’t afford to pay for journal­ism, I say you can’t afford not to. Because you will pay in all different ways.”

This gives me a chance to plug a subscription to our sister paper the Camden New Journal’s account on Substack.