181: And The Winner Is...

0:01Andy and Anna here from your new favourite podcast, No Such Thing as a Fish. Yes, we are two of the four hosts of the podcast that stuffs fascinating, amazing, weird, mad facts into your ears on a weekly basis. You got any good facts, Andy? Yes. How about this one? Anteaters have evolved on 12 separate occasions. Wow. Mysterious. Wonderful. The world really wants them to exist. What about this one? When Ronald Reagan left office, he left a note on the White House lawn for the squirrels, warning them to beware of George Bush's dogs. So there you go. If you like fascinating facts and much more besides, we are no such thing as a fish.

0:42Page 94, the Private Eye podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94. This is an extremely exciting one. Behind me, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of brilliant journalists, of whom six have been shortlisted for this year's Paul Foote Award in memory of the late, great campaigning journalist Paul Foote. We're about to find out which of those journalists has won this year's award. So, without further ado, over to the magazine's editor, 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.

1:24Looking 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 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 fake terrorism story and the consequent fallout, the inflected blood scandal.

2:23Paul 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. Certainly wouldn't happen now. Jonathan Aitken, his obsessive campaign against him, again, which ended with a win. The great sword of justice was blunted. And Aitken had to apologise, give up, and then he went to jail. The great thing about Paul, though, he took all this stuff incredibly seriously but he wanted journalism to be fun and for it to be enjoyable and life enhancing and I remember with Jonathan Aitken we were he'd sued us we were in serious trouble and I said I'm thinking of putting in a fake apology Paul thought was funny and said why don't you put it in we did put it in Jonathan Aitken didn't think it was funny he renewed a claim for exemplary damages which he may well have got I don't remember the end of the story um the point of the point of the story um is that uh the great thing about Paul and it's the reason the prize is named after him is he was passionate about journalism but he wanted it to be entertaining and he knew that to get people to read a story particularly a story of any length it had to be entertaining, accessible and worth reading.

4:04And Paul, he could make you sad, he could make you furious, he could make you laugh and he could make you care, which is quite difficult nowadays, particularly when he was presenting his stuff to me. So what I'm going to do is announce the winner, invite them to come up and get their cheque and then invite all of the people on the shortlist. So this is the moment. the Paul Foot Awards 2026 goes to Peter Gagan and Khadija Shari So here we are with the winner of this year's Paul Foot Award Peter Gagan, congratulations Peter Thank you very much Andy Would you like to thank God the Academy I'd like to thank I'd like to thank all the wonderful people I worked with to tell their stories First and foremost, someone who's not here which is Khadijah Sharif, who was my co-author with so many of these pieces.

4:57If it wasn't for Khadijah, this story would never have been told, and certainly not in the way it was told. So that absolutely couldn't happen otherwise. And obviously a huge thanks to everybody at Private Eye and all the judges and everybody else who took the time to go through a story like that. Who also listened to a contribution from, you know, we're a newsletter. You know, we're a small website. There's only three of us. To be able to punch at the same level as some of these incredible stories is just, yeah, it's phenomenal. Nothing for Keir Starmer in your thanks, without whom? Well, maybe a small thanks to Josh Simons, without whom we wouldn't be, you know, I wouldn't be standing here, the voters at Makerfield wouldn't be going to the polls in a couple of weeks' time, so maybe it's all down to Josh.

5:37Maybe, maybe. Now, the other thing we should say, which we didn't say when we first interviewed you, this is not your first time on the shortlist for the Poll and Fever Award. It's time number... It's time number three. Time number three, so I was... Yeah, I think my experience at the Paul Foote Awards is a good example of, you know, fail and fail better, as my compatriot Samuel Beckett once said. Back in, I think, 2018, maybe 2019, myself, my colleague, Jenna Cordroy, were long listed for an investigation we did into Aaron Banks. Whatever happened to him? Oh, actually, yes, yeah, you know, who would know?

6:11And a few years later, we were shortlisted, myself and Jenna and Lucas Amin, were shortlisted for an investigation into the Cabinet Office's Freedom of Information Clearinghouse, how they were you might remember that story how they were suppressing fois from journalists campaigners and others and also that year i was also shortlisted with the guardian as part of their investigations i've been doing with them into covid corruption and ppe lanes as people might remember as well so your fourth time on the charlotte really yeah so fourth time lucky there we go this shows the importance of perseverance in journalism yeah yeah well Well, congratulations again, Peter.

6:46It's a terrific story. We'll find out the results very soon in a wider sense. Yeah. Thank you very much, Andy. Thank you. That's it for this year's Port Photo Award. We'll be back in a year with another one, and we'll be back tomorrow with another regular episode of the Private Eye podcast recorded from the Hay Festival. Bye for now. Andy and Anna here from your new favourite podcast, No Such Thing as a Fish. Yes, we are two of the four hosts of the podcast that stuffs fascinating, amazing, weird, mad facts into your ears on a weekly basis. You got any good facts, Andy? Yes. How about this one?

7:24Anteaters have evolved on 12 separate occasions. Wow. Mysterious. Wonderful. The world really wants them to exist. What about this one? When Ronald Reagan left office, he left a note on the White House lawn for the squirrels, warning them to beware of George Bush's dogs. So there you go. If you like fascinating facts and much more besides, we are No Such Thing As A Fish.