women any girlfriend, i don't lie to women any without saying, except the queen. that is not a legal problem, that is a supreme court judgment, that is not a legal problem, that is a supreme courtjudgment, this is oui’ a supreme courtjudgment, this is ourjob, the facts. and you sometimes jump on 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's this brilliant picture of him just going into number ten, so we did it as the 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. and in terms of your annual, when you've got a year to get through — you've done many of these annuals, of course — when you've got to curate a year, what you were saying a moment ago is whatjournalism is about, what is your starting point with thinking about how we deal with this? do you just think "let's get the bestjokes" or do you think "we really to reflect the yea r"? i try and get the bestjokes, and if we've been dull about a particular subject or have not covered it well, i try and leave it out. i mean, we're exhaustive,

but the idea is to be entertaining. you've been personally committed, havrn‘t you, to trying to reverse the decline of the english cartoonist. yes. why have you and private eye kept up with your investment in cartoons? um, because, um, people like them and the mag sells. no, obviously, it's a much more elevated reason than that. no, i love cartoons! and that i think that one of the things that print can do is reproduce sort of beautiful drawings that are funny. and english cartooning tradition is very old and i think absolutely remarkable. so i am basically — i doubled the number of cartoons and people said "well, you know, there aren't any young cartoonists." "you won't get anyone." it is funny — if you offer money, people become cartoonists! it's amazing. we have got a brilliant raft of young cartoonists. i mean, this is a genuine skill and there are lots of people who do it really well. i mentioned politics, which is what most of your covers are about. now, we seem to be in an age of polarisation, don't we?

and genuine diffeences. why has that happened, do oyu think? is is the delayed effect of a financial crash? i think the referendum was a question about, you know, whether you are essentially happy with the way britain is or not, whether you think it is too unequal, whether you think you have been left behind by the international world that has come into business, whether you would rather your life was structured in different ways. in the end, for me, it wasn't really about europe at all. i mean, the question that people answered was a question about themselves. it's perfectly reasonable, but it did not have anything to do with the eu. so we managed to politicise, essentially, a cultural divide. which is why we have ended up with three years of people shouting at each other. and interestingly, the last three years has furnished your covers with some very loud characters. what does that do for satire, though? does satire become easier or harder when you have the stranger—than—life characters? i mean, it does two things. one is everybody says

to you, "satire is over because you cannot satirise trump — he's doing it to himself". or, "boris is funny," you know? there's 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 where we have done some joke about 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 by something, that's what you want. does he ever get in touch? do his people ever get in touch? i mean, he's blessed your cover many, many, many times. do you think boris is still cheesed off when he sees himself, perhaps with jennifer arcuri, on your front page? oh, i do hope so! what's your technique for dealing with people who are readily offended online?

well, i'm not online, which helps. how have you found that that's hard to sustain over the course of the development of the internet? you've two children in their 20s — i mean, what do they think with the fact that dad is not online? i've no idea, presumably because i haben‘t not looked online! no, it's very restful. i do recommend it! i think i could get used to that idea. u nfortu nately, the bbc‘s media editor may not be allowed to do that. one of the things about the age which we live is that the truth seems up for grabs in a way that it has not been for a long time — maybe not ever in the course of your career. do you think it is fair to say that these days, the penalty or sanction faced by those caught lying has almost disappeared ? there are people are getting away with lying as never before. i mean, i do think is a real problem now, the idea of fake news, and that is one of the things that is why i don't spend a lot of time online, because i'm infuriated by, you know, perfectly reasonable people who say to me, "pfft!" "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 these are people who, they say to you, "the mainstream media, ian, 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's 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, it makes the idea of truth polluted, which, as we know from the history of fake news, this is what the original putin doctrine was and this is what trump wants. he does not want you to believe this rubbish he pumps out. he wants you to believe nothing. and yet i know that people watching this on bbc or listening will think that, "actually, the bbc is part of the problem," that , you know, these days,

if you want to go viral, you say, "there is a conspiracy of silence at the bbc." whether or not there is one or not, why are people so keen to believe conspiracy theories about a cover—up by journalists? in other words, why is trust injournalism so low? well, i mean, we have not distinguished ourselves over past 20 years! you know, the phone hacking thing was not good. the levison inquiry was not marvellous. so, i mean, there is a reason for people to be slightly sceptical about journalism. but it is in much the same way as the, you know, the expenses scandal made people very sceptical about politicians. but i believe is that — and i have said this before — but that being sceptical is not the same as being cynical. it does not mean you believe in nothing, you try and assess and evaluatee. 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. the 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, 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 in order to survive, or do you have to think we are entering a darker, post—democratic age? no, i don't believe that, but then 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. and 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.

but essentially, i think most periods — and one of the good things about getting older — think "this is a terrible time" and "british politics ever been so divisive?" and i think, "poll tax, riots, the miners‘ strike" — that was not a cohesive period. and you know, i was quite naive, and my mother—in—law 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. behind you, there a re 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's weafre? 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's 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.

many swapped out a dry and often sunny christmas day for a grey and often soggy boxing day. this was how it looked to the south—east of london for one of our weather watchers. some brightness, certainly some dry weather for a time across the far north, and more of us will see drier weather. there will be quite a lot of cloud, and it will rain across western areas as we go through tonight, wales and the south west tending to pull away, rain continuing through northern ireland, into western scotland, some rain getting into north—west england. turning milder in western areas but further east, particularly northern england and parts of scotland, cold enough for a touch of frost. into tomorrow, a warm front pushing east was, bringing patchy rain, another frontal system bringing rain into the north—west, between those two weather fronts a south—westerly wind sucking some increasingly mild air in our direction.

here's friday, but warm front bringing patchy rain eastwards, across parts of scotland and northern england. our next frontal system bringing rain into western scotland and northern ireland. elsewhere a lot of dry weather, cloud, some glimmers of sunshine breaking through. western parts will feel milder, i2 celsius for belfast, plymouth, single digits for the time being. frontal system still running across the north west on saturday, bristol wins as well. further south and east we are looking at a lot of dry weather. england died well should be largely dry on saturday. cloud around but sunny breaks, largely fine for northern ireland, rain clipping into the north—west. eastern scotland dry, the western side seen outbreaks of rain. all of us just about by this stage in double figures. it stays very mild as we go into sunday, we should see more sunshine developing cross england, wales, the south and east of scotland.

still some outbreaks at times, temperatures of 11—14 degrees in one or two places. as we head into the last couple of days of 2019, most will see dry weather, some rain in the north—west, and it will stay fairly mild.

this is bbc news. the headlines at seven: spanish police have named the three british holidaymakers who died in a swimming pool on christmas eve. gabriel diya and his two children drowned at a hotel on the costa del sol. anyone that knew they would say the same thing. they were just beautiful, lovely people. more than 60 migrants in small boats have been rescued trying to cross the channel to the uk. at least 16 dead and many missing after a typhoon rips through the philipines, leaving a trail of devastation behind it. rescuers have been looking for possible victims of four avalanches that have hit ski resorts in austria and switzerland. "what's occurring?" more than 11 million people tuned in for the return of gavin and stacey, making it the most

watched christmas day