I Was There Too: celebrating the bit-part stars of films like Speed
The best magazine and newspaper podcasts “sound like the institutions that spawned them”, said James Marriott in The Times. For example,
The Daily – earnest, urgent and liberal – “just
is The New York Times”. Remarkably, Private Eye’s podcast Page 94 manages to capture the spirit of a magazine that includes cartoons and satire, political and Fleet Street gossip, and “detailed investigations” into corporate malfeasance. “If it sometimes feels a bit cobbled together, that’s because that’s the way the readers (and now the listeners) like it.” Its “not-so-secret weapon” is, of course, Ian Hislop. Look out for the episode in which he and fellow Eye hack Francis Wheen join in conversation about Robert Maxwell, “one of the Eye’s greatest ever enemies”. Both have the “wit, long perspective and good noses for establishment hypocrisy” that makes the Eye the institution it is.