christmas day service. prince andrew arrived at an earlier service in sandringham with his brother prince charles. he recently stepped back from public duties. three members of a british family have drowned at a holiday resort on the costa del sol — spanish police are investigating. the dean of westminster abbey says britain is in need of the hope offered by the christmas story. hundreds of people in australia have been forced from their homes for the holidays, as the country battles some of its worst bushfires in years. now on bbc news, our media editor amol rajan sits down with the editor of private eye, ian hislop, to take a look back at 2019.

hello. you are everywhere. thank you for having us in, thank you so much. how do you come up with a cover like those? this was when theresa may, do you remember her? she was around at the beginning of the year. she used to be prime minister. anyway, she left and we had to think — how can we pay tribute to theresa may? so i thought perhaps a blank page will be good, and so we have the theresa may memorial issue, her legacy in full. uh, thank you. which again seems quite cruel, but was quite funny. do you know how each of those sell? yeah, that was a seller. i'm afraid that was popular. and nigel farage? this is great, he's always good. partly because he always does photo opportunities, so having been accused of having a party full of fruitca kes, he does a photo op eating a fruit cake. i mean, it is fantastic.

he does the joke for us. borisjohnson‘s private life has frequently furnished you with cover ideas and this one you have here. this was sort of essentially a smut special. because there was a proper public interest in this story in that public money had gone to this woman on the dancing pole, but essentially the joke was boris had yet again been called out. he is saying, "i need some technology lessons," and she is saying, "floppy disk or hard drive?" there is a properjoke here. with boris saying to his new girlfriend, "i don't lie to women any more," and she is saying, "except the queen obviously." that that is not a legal problem, that is the supreme courtjudgement. you know, this is ourjob, reporting the facts. and sometimes anniversaries too.

this is when boris became prime minister, which many people equate with an event as unlikely as landing on the moon. but he did and there is a picture of him just going into number 10, so we did it as a lunar landing, a souvenir issue, one small step for man and a giant leap in the dark for mankind. and put it in black and white. when you have a year to get through and have many of these annuals of course and when you have to do a year, what you're saying moments ago is whatjournalism is about, what are you thinking about dealing with this? do you get the bestjokes or really to reflect the year? i try and get the bestjokes and if we had been dull about a particular subject or have not covered it well, i try and leave it out. i mean we are exhaustive, but the idea is to be entertaining. you've been personally committed to trying to reverse the decline of the english cartoonist.

why have you and private eye kept up with investment in cartoons? because people like them and the mag sells. no, obviously it's a much more elevated reason than that. no, i love cartoons, and i think that one of the things that print can do is reproduce sort of beautiful drawings that are funny. and the english cartoon tradition is very old and i think remarkable. so i basically doubled the number of cartoons. and people said there are not any young cartoonists, you won't get anyone. it is funny, if you offer money, people become cartoonists. we have got a brilliant raft of young cartoonists. i mean, this is a genuine skill and a lot of people do it really well. i mentioned politics which we will come to. and everything to be in a state of polarisation, a genuine difference. why has that happened? a delayed effect of the financial crash? i think the referendum was a question about

whether you are essentially happy with the way britain is or not, whether it is too unequal or you have been left behind by the international world that has come into business, whether you would rather your life was structured different ways. and the referendum was not really about europe at all. the question people answered was a question about themselves. fairly reasonable, but it did not have anything to do with the eu. we managed to politicize essentially a cultural divide. which is why we have ended up in three years people shouting at each other. the last three years has furnished your covers with some very loud characters. what about satire? has it become easier or harder when we have the stranger than life characters? i mean it does two things. one is everybody says to you satire is over now because you cannot satirize donald trump, he does it to himself. or boris is funny. nothing more to add. which is not true.

but you have to work harder. because you have to find the areas where they are vulnerable, the areas where they genuinely are funny and where you can get under their skin. obviously it's incredibly flattering, we have done somejoke about donald trump which turned up in a tweet saying this was unfunny and not clever and not funny, and that is the ultimate prize. and to find that boris is furious about something — that's what you want. does he ever get in touch, he's been on your cover many times, do you think he is still cheesed off when he sees himself on the front page? i do hope so. what is your technique for dealing with people who are readily offended online? well, i'm not online, which helps. how have you found that is hard to sustain? over the course of the existence of the internet, you have two children in their 20s,

what do they think with the fact that dad is not online? i have no idea. i have not looked online. no, it is very restful. i do recommend it. i could get used to that idea. unfortunately the bbc media editor may not be allowed to do that. one of the things about the age which we live is the truth seems up for grabs in a way it has not been for a long time, maybe ever in the course of your career. do you think it is fair to say these days the penalty or sanction faced by those caught lying has almost disappeared. people are getting away with lying as never before. i do think it is a real problem now, the idea that fake news and that is one of the things that is why i don't put a lot of time online because i am infuriated by reasonable people who say to me, "i notice you did not run that story about hillary clinton murdering everybody." and i said i did not run it because it is not true.

and they said i read it online. and the people who they say to you the mainstream media isjust full of lies. and then they believe the biggest and stupidest lie that someone in a bedroom has written up on the internet and sent out as a blog. i mean there is a real divide between the sort of supposedly scepticism, sort of fierce refusal to believe anything you read in the normal media and then believing almost anything you read online. and this is weird and it makes it... it makes the idea of truth polluted, which we know from the history of fake news is what the original putin doctrine was and what trump wants, he does not want you do believe this rubbish he pumps out, he wants you to believe nothing. people watching this on bbc or listening to this via bbc podcast will think that actually the bbc is part of the problem. but there is these days if you want to go viral you say there is a conspiracy at the bbc. why are people so keen to believe conspiracy theories about journalists?

why is trust in journalism so low? we have not distinguished ourselves in the past 30 years. the phone hacking thing was not good and the leveson inquiry was not marvellous. i mean there is a reason for people to be fully sceptical about journalism. it is not much the same way as the expenses scandal made us very sceptical about politicians. but i believe and i have said this before that being sceptical is not the same as being cynical. it does not mean you believe in nothing but you assess or value. there is really good journalism going on. the alternative is literally sitting at home thinking i wonder what i believe. is it really striking about the election campaign that we saw at the end of 2019 that a lot of the fake news was actually pumped out by official channels? it was coming from the main parties.

is that not really what fake news is and is that notjust old—fashioned political spin? i think the thing that really shocked everyone in that political campaign was not the idea that hidden on the internet somewhere there were messages going out that were being paid for and we did not know about. i mean it is reasonable to criticise. it was the fact that political parties were pretending they were fact—checking outputs or pretending they were another outfit in order to pump out their own messages. old—fashioned political spin is we are the tory party and we promise you 80,000 more trees, houses, nurses, whatever it is, we are labour party, no, we have 80,000 and another 80,000 nurses, trees, whatever. that is old—fashioned political spin, that's what people know about. the fake messaging and then when you get caught out and you say, "oh, it was a joke." it is satire, no it is not satire. we are doing bloody satire. get the tory party out of it.

you said in the past you don't talk much about your voting habits but you said you were a democrat and believe in democracy. look around the world, do you think we are in this sort of period of democratic recession which is a correction that has been readjusted but it will survive, or do you have to think we are entering a darker post—democratic age? no, i don't believe that but that i am on the whole quite optimistic. i mean we are in the middle of a cult of the strongman and a lot of leadership around the world is very autocratic. populist movements have i think done democracy no favours. in forgetting the normal checks and balances and the structures and sort of boring sets of standards and values that allow democracy to function. none of that is very encouraging. essentially i think most periods, and one of the good things

about getting older, think this is a terrible times. that british politics has never been so divisive and i think the poll tax, riots, the miners‘ strike, that was not a cohesive period. and you know, i credit my mother—in—law who said to me i have never been so worried as i am now about the world. and i said you were a teenager in 1939. and she said so i was. i do think that you have to keep a certain amount of perspective. conscious as i say is that behind you there are endless letters. in terms of threats you have had this year, legal and otherwise, you have had many legal threats over the year. how does this year rank in terms of the threats to ruin you and your family? interesting because i think that

something about brexit, people must be a bit more depressed. we have had quite a lot of very rich people suing. what sort of stuff? mostly russian or thereabouts. about money and why it is in london where it is going to and we've had quite a lot of that. is there ever any danger that these cases are going to end up bankrupting you and private eye? i have a wooden table. we will see. we survive on the favour of our readers. they pay up and that is where our money comes from. and you know most of our stories are about unexplained wealth. you know where ours is from and we don't know where theirs is from. so that's the difference. thank you very much indeed. fascinating reflections on 2019. it

is coming round to quarter to 11. the focus will be on sandringham. the queen and members of the royal family are about to attend a church service there following the duke of edinburgh's return from hospital. the duke came back to norfolk on christmas eve following a four—night stay at the king edward vii hospital. he did not attend the christmas day church service last year and it is not known if he will do so today. prince george and princess charlotte are set to attend the annual christmas church gathering for the first time. and charlotte gallagher is in sandringham for us. she has been there for the last couple of days in the build—up to all of this. we can see a shop of the road were some significant arrivals are anticipating —— anticipated. give us a sense of what you are witnessing. all of the camera lenses and the snappers from

the newspapers are pointed in one direction, the road coming up from the main sandringham house. the royals come in a chauffeur driven car. i don't know if you can see that at the moment on the news channel. earlier on they did a heart as well. people trying to send a message that the royal family. so, who will, apart from the queen? we don't think prince philip will be here. he hasjust don't think prince philip will be here. he has just left don't think prince philip will be here. he hasjust left hospital and did not attend last year as he has stepped back from public life. prince andrew, there has been a lot of scrutiny and criticism because of his friendship with the convicted sex offenderjeffrey epstein. prince charles attended a private church service earlier. we could see princess charlotte and prince