this is bbc news. the headlines: the uk hasjoined a growing list of countries imposing new covid restrictions on arrivals from china in response to a surge in infections. england will require a negative pre—departure test from next week. the controversial online influencer andrew tate has been remanded into custody for 30 days in romania along with his brother. the pair were arrested on thursday as part they confirm that the former president paid no tax in 2020. the american journalist barbara walters has died aged 93. during a career which spanned more than five decades, she became the first female co—presenter of a major network

tv news programme in the us. now on bbc news — ian hislop�*s 2022: in conversation with amol rajan. even by recent standards, 2022 has been a tumultuous year in news. russia launched a war in europe. her late majesty queen elizabeth ii died just months after her platinum jubilee. and britain went through three prime ministers and even more chancellors. one man who's tried to make sense of it is ian hislop, whether on tv or as editor of private eye's fortnightly magazine and latest annual. i visited his office for a conversation notjust

about recent news, but also why it's been a turn—off for some and why we need proper journalism more than ever. ian, thank you so much for talking to me and to bbc news. let's start, if you're happy to, with a few kind of reflections on this year, because in recent years the news agenda has often felt pretty crazy... yeah. ..and overwhelming, but this year, even more than most, we've had war in europe, the death of her late majesty the queen, we've had three prime ministers. i mean, has the news felt crazy because it's actually been crazy and the world has been crazy, or is itjust something about how we're covering it these days? no, i think it is genuinely crazy. i don't think the media can blame themselves for this one. i mean, we're very keen to take the credit for everything, but i don't think this was much to do with us. i mean, we ended up at one point trying to cover two prime ministers in one issue. now, we haven't done that before, erm... and at one point, i think one of the prime ministers, i can't even remember which one said, "why is the media

going on about this?" and i think, "cos you're stabbing each other in the back! "and it's quite interesting." is there a sense in which kind of the news has become ever more frenetic, partly because of social media? and is there, do you think, a danger that that creates a bit of a gulf between journalists who are kind of living online and updating things by the minute and normal people who, you know, fancy going to the pub? erm, yeah, and i think it's important not to get totally obsessed by the speed of the news cycle which journalists operate on, cos normal people clearly don't. they, er, they either look at a newspaper or they see something on their phone, or they watch the news in the evening, and one of the huge advantages for private eye has been, and this obviously has not been intentional, isjust being a fortnightly, it means you get a bit of a breather. so the news comes and everyone goes, "0h, what's your take on that? "that's fantastic. 0h! well, what's happening now?" and then we think, "mm, yeah, we're not doing anything till monday, so we'll have a look at what it looks like then." you've had to deal with this over many years. people will say, "if you're constantly saying what a bunch

of useless "people we have in power, people might give up on democracy. "they might give up on voting." what do you say to the charge that private eye does promote a kind of cynicism about politics? if you get a brand—new prime minister who says, "i've got this brilliant theory, i thought of it when i was a student, "i'm going to try it out. for real." and then she bankrupts great britain, er, it's reasonable to have been sceptical beforehand. it isn't cynical to say, "my god, she's bonkers, and this is really dangerous." that's not undermining cynicism, that is sceptical and, as it turned out, an underestimate of the damage that she would do. nobody�*s asking you to give up. what you're asking people to do is...is to be better. how does the role of humour, comedy, change in a time when there is such grimness around? you know, we're talking, of course, at a time when there's a war in europe that's lasted for nine months, when there's a cost of living crisis and people are feeling a real sort of pinch as we go into winter. mm. how does that affect the role

of some of the stuff that you've done for many decades, which is try and make people laugh? people say, "oh, it's particularly bad now." it isn't really. i mean, not compared, you know, to the last 60 years, erm, and thejob is much the same. i remember explaining this to an american academic. i said, "our basic motto is the great philosopher mary poppins, "that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." very, very wise words. and that's what you're doing, erm, with, erm, comedy. i mean, yes, these events are grim. yes, it's...it's...it's bonkers and ghastly. but it is funny. the absurdity is there. and that's what we try and do. how is the eye doing financially, commercially? commercially, well, i mean, we are, erm, we are selling about 240,000 copies, which is a lot. erm... that's growth, isn't it? that is growth. that's...erm, that's

not...not liz truss growth. this is real growth, and essentially the pandemic was very good in terms of our recovery because, you know, everything shut, you know, the train stations, the airports, all the independent newsagents, we suddenly had nowhere to sell the mag, erm, and we had to pivot i believe we say. that's the phrase. yes, i think that is the phrase in the industry. in the industry. that's the parlance. so we're selling a lot in supermarkets now and, erm, we sell a lot of subscriptions. so, i mean, for us, we found that people were really keen. they weren't news bored at all. they were very keen to find out what was going on. and you said many years ago that for you the best digital strategy was not having one. yeah. how's that holding up? that's remained entirely true. erm, we're still in print, and print is what we do. erm, and, er, people like print. they like having it in their hand. they like the time to read it. i mean, if you're on a screen all day, why do you want more screen? here's something else. we've talked about sort of huge

changes to the news industry, and amongst the changes that journalists have to contend with are legal changes. yes. why have you, along with other leading editors, put your name to a letter arguing against so—called slapp legislation? this slapp — strategic lawsuits against public participation. this is using legal action as a weapon to try and shut journalism down. i mean, it's very simple, and it's used by lots of extremely rich people for whom money is not a problem, and for whom, er, the method, erm, of legislation means that the story will be killed. erm, and i'm against that, and it's been used by a lot of oligarchs, and it's been used, um, to shut down criticism of seriously, um, worrying individuals. is it the case that the law in this country is disproportionately used by very rich people to try and silence journalism? yes, i mean, it is, and there have been some incredibly brave people, in particular writing about russia, who have been obliged either with their publications or with their publishers, they've been writing books,

to fight extraordinary, complex and difficult actions, which are not brought in the interests of the public. they are merely brought to shut down criticism. um, and that seems to me absurd, um, that we're allowing london to be a focus for, um, attempts to shut down freedom of speech. i mean, is that...is that a boast for a capital city? you've championed press freedom, journalistic freedom for...for decades. in the context that you're talking about there, do you agree with the editor of the spectator, fraser nelson, when he says that the 0nline safety bill is a censor�*s charter? because the 0nline safety bill introduces a category of legal but harmful speech, albeit for under—18s. erm, yeah, i mean, ithink that bill needs to go back and be rethought. why? erm, because they haven't worked out how to... ..balance the interests of the safety of the public

and the online harms with freedom of speech. erm, and i think it's important that we forget neither of those bits, and i think at the moment it's a mess. for people who look at russia's invasion of ukraine or protests in china, and who don't necessarily work in journalism, why is freedom of speech so fundamental to our democracy? it's incredibly important to people who don't have it. and we are very privileged and, you know, editors in my position, you know, in countries like turkey, locked up, deported, gone. china — you disappear. russia — you may well be dead. you fall out of a window inconveniently, you know, or you're like poor old navalny — you're in there forever. you know? it's a really serious business. ok, let's look at some of the news highlights from this year or indeed lowlights. i mean, it's worth saying you did get a front cover out of this on the front of the annual. this was a year the war came to europe. yep.

so what's the conversation in the soho offices of private eye ? you've got war in europe for the first time in decades and you've got to get a laugh out of it, and you did, but you focused not on president zelenskyy, but his rival and his antagonist, president putin. just talk us through that front page. i mean, you know, there is nothing new in...in black humour, particularly when applied to russia. i mean, they're very good at it themselves with their own leaders, um, and putin went into the war on an absurdity by pretending it was something else, and we had a cover of...of putin saying to one of his generals, "you're a peacekeeping force." and the general saying, um, "well, which piece would you like to keep?" and he said, "all of it." and that essentially was the pretence at the beginning. and, i mean, that's what comedy can do. you can just underline this, the idea that this was not a war, um, eventually, um, even people in russia who are, you know, fed a constant drip

of propaganda have started thinking, "it looks very like a war, and these young men who are being conscripted "appear to be going to a war." let's have a look at another man who, er... slightly close to home. earlier today, sue gray published her final report, which i commissioned to get to the bottom of things and to set the record straight, and i'm grateful to her for her work. she's identified a number of failings — some official, some political, and some that i accept are entirely my own, for which i take full responsibility. just tell us what you did with partygate. well, um, partygate was, um... it does feel a long time ago. i mean, we ran a cover of boris outside the front door of number 10 saying, um, "bring your own boos," and then everyone out there going, "boo! boo!" which seemed to me entirely appropriate. i was going to say, we ended up in a situation where the prime minister of this country and the chancellor ended up with criminal sanctions. yes. and the criminal sanctions they got did directly flow

from journalistic endeavour. yes. i mean, the partygate story was broken by the mirror and, er, and then the rest of the media, quite rightly, piled in, and we found out more and more and more, and from initial denials, we ended up with, um, complete acknowledgement, and the police saying, "yes." keir starmer said that he would resign if he got a criminal sanction, but the issue that united starmer and johnson was that this was a year in which basically integrity and trust... yep. ..and the truthfulness of the people that run our country was kind of in the spotlight as it hadn't been for a very long time. yeah, and however people do attempt to spin this afterwards, borisjohnson was removed by his own party in an extraordinary rebellion unseen of government ministers, saying, "we cannot put up with you any more." and they weren't saying, "we don't... we disagree with you about policy. we don't feel you're "taking us in the right direction." none of that was the issue.

well, that issue of character and truthfulness led eventually to this. i know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed, and i want you to know how sad i am to be giving up the best job in the world. but them's the breaks. we got to know that lectern quite well this year. what did you make of that resignation speech? i mean, it was extraordinary in its lack of remorse and contrition. i mean, when he went, private eye ran a cover saying, "borisjohnson�*s legacy" and we put on the cover a picture of an overflowing toilet. crucially, you finished with letters from readers, and one of the things that all news organisations increasingly try to do is create a community feeling, a feeling that if you buy that publication or you watch that bulletin, you're a member of a club, and you finished with letters and i won't swear but what sort of reaction did this scatological front page elicit from your readers? they were very cross,

a lot of them. did they cancel their subs? yes. a lot of cancelled subscribers. people saying, "today's cover is utterly disgusting and reprehensible." "remove this." "kicking a man when you're down." er, "you conflate satire with scatology." "today's cover is disgusting — not worthy of you." but then there were some other people who. . .who thought it was very good, and the letter i particularly liked was from a woman who moved here fairly recently, and she said, "i'm happy to live here in a country where covers like your latest "are perfectly acceptable." erm, "long live this country." and i thought, "yeah, that's the letter i'm going to end the annual on." erm, because i do think in the end people are allowed to know and allowed to criticise what their rulers are up to, and if we've had a bizarre year, it's because it's been bonkers. so, after borisjohnson resigned, there was this extraordinary period in british politics. the public didn't have a say in his successor, who appointed a chancellor who gave a now notorious mini budget,

i think it became called. growth is not as high as it should be. this has made it harder to pay for public services, requiring taxes to rise. we need a new approach for a new era, focused on both. and you'll be chancellor and liz truss will be - prime minister this time next month? i absolutely. 100%. i'm not going anywhere. well, he... i mean, he wasn't going anywhere, was he? nor was the party. that mini budget became notorious. it was pretty fertile ground for a satirical publication. what did you do with it? i mean, right from the moment when liz truss was chosen, when she was chosen as prime minister, we said, "this is the continuity candidate. "she's blonde, she's a self publicist, "she'll say anything to get elected. "she does u—turns and she'll be out in no time." that was our first response to liz truss and we were pretty much on the money. if it hadn't been so catastrophic for so many people's lives and pensions, it would be hysterical.

well, one consequence of the kwasi kwarteng budget is we got to see that lectern outside downing street again. we delivered on energy bills and on cutting national insurance, and we set out a vision for a low tax, high growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of brexit. was it a challenge covering liz truss' resignation when so recently you'd had to do another conservative prime minister doing a similarthing? thejohnson car crash took a long time, um, even though it was only a couple of years, it was a long time coming. er, the truss car crash was unbelievably fast. one of the other stories that has repeatedly been in the front of our lives and in the front of bulletins has been climate change protesting, and in particular a group called just stop 0il, who have thrown orange paint at paintings and also held up disruption.

the, um, climate change sort of fell out of the news cycle. you remember cop26 was quite a big deal in britainjust before. glasgow. and, you know, the press were very much behind this. um, the broadcasters were all saying, "this is a very, very serious issue." a year later, it's, "oh, look, they're holding up the traffic. "that's really annoying, isn't it?" i mean, it is quite annoying, but i suppose the argument is that the end of the earth as we know it is quite annoying, and is going to be quite inconvenient. and there is...there is a balance here between... there is a balance, but there's a balance, isn't there, between the principle, the right to protest, which has a very long tradition and history in this country, and the practicalities, there's a lot of people who were deeply inconvenienced. yeah, well, i mean, you know, i'm not...i�*m not trying to be unsympathetic with people who wanted to get past or drive to work. i'm just saying, this is what protest does. i mean, i think they've got to work out how to protest to get the maximum positive response, and i think the first

group of climate change protests did that much more effectively, and i think this year, a couple of times, they've gone wrong. and then on the 6th of february this year, her majesty the queen became the first british monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee. 70 years. we saw her in may when she made a surprise appearance on the... to open the elizabeth line, which is the new line that goes across london, and she was given £5 credit on her 0yster card, which was funny and fitting for someone who's famously frugal. and in earlyjune, we had the platinum jubilee events, which was a moment of national unity and eccentricity, wasn't it? yes, and we introduced this. we had a photograph of the prime minister, borisjohnson, saying to her majesty, "enjoy the four days of partying." and her majesty saying, "it's a work event." which, in many ways it was. um, so, no, i mean, it was a remarkably bonkers, um, event, but the paddington thing essentially secured it, i think.

perhaps you would like a marmalade sandwich? i always keep one for emergencies. so do i. i keep mine in here. whoa. for later. and then on the 8th of september at 6:30 in the evening, it was the moment that every news presenter, every news producer, maybe every magazine editor has thought about for many, many years. many have rehearsed. it was the announcement of the death of her majesty the queen. a few moments ago, buckingham palace announced the death of her majesty queen elizabeth ii. off-screen: bbc is interrupting normal programmes. _ where were you when you heard that news? um, i was sitting in make—up at have i got news for you about to go on in front of an audience to do a show. and the producers came in and said, "the queen has died and we're not

doing the show." and they sent the audience home. and that was it. so, i had a slightly strange, um, moment of, erm, joining in the national mourning. was that almost a relief that you didn't have to go out and pretend that all was ok, or...? i mean, partly you didn't have to respond suddenly to this momentous event, but was it almost a relief that you didn't have to try and be funny? no. part of me obviouslyjust wanted to go on and say, "well, this is extraordinary. we can react to anything." um, er, but, actually, when we were talking earlier about the way the news cycle works, it was much better to have a bit of distance because by then you had had the full panoply of british pomp and circumstance moving in, which i always quote alan bennett, who said he was once watching the trooping of the colour, and he said, "i think this is absolutely ridiculous." and he realised he had a lump in his throat. erm, and that, i think, is one thing we did learn from the queen's funeral is that as a nation,

we are perfectly capable of being serious about what is serious. erm, and i do think it was an extraordinarily mature response. erm, whenever anyone said, "this is a tragedy," someone else said, "no, it isn't a tragedy. she's a very, very old woman "who's had the most extraordinary life." it's a huge loss. but i did think there was a...a genuine sense of what had happened that took over the country. and that struck me as...as...as...as terribly positive. i remember thinking, "how's private eye going to cover this?" this seemed to me an event that took its own life. and the first thing it did, being britain, is it turned into a queue. and there's just no way of getting around the fact that everybody loved the queue. they liked watching it. they liked being in it. they liked complaining about holly and phil in it. they liked thinking, "0h, why�*s beckham in it?" the general public is making these jokes. so, we did a cover about, you know, basically the headline was, "god save the queue!"

cos that seemed to be the important thing, and it was charles meeting people in the queue and saying to one of them, "how long did you have to wait?" and one of the kids saying, "not as long as you." he chuckles which seemed to me, um, perfectly reasonable. _ i want to just stick with the media and think about one particular man who has very big sway over it. elon musk. yeah. we've ended this year with rather a lot of elon musk in the news and pretty relentlessly so. elon musk seems now to be something of an editor of the internet. he, to some extent, gets to decide who has access to the megaphone that he owns and controls, and he's decided, for instance, that donald trump should once again have access. do you think elon musk has too much power in modern media? undoubtedly. but, again, i don't know whether twitter will. . .will collapse. i mean, that...that would amuse me no end. i think that would be quite the funniest story of the year. why? because i think it's almost always wrong about everything.

erm, almost infallible in its fallibility. erm, and it strikes me as really toxic, and really unhelpful, and really dangerous, and really bad for people, and... and bad for democracy? 0h, definitely bad... i think it's just bad full—stop, really. let's talk about one other aspect of modern media, which is the growth in celebrity culture. ijust wanted to show what i'm just like as a person. people have, you know... lots of people come to me with preconceived ideas for obvious reasons, and ijust wanted to be myself. let's take matt hancock mp, former health secretary, on his own terms. he said he went to thatjungle because he wanted more people to understand what he's really like. now, regardless of whether or not that's what that says about our politics, isn't there a sense in which people did get to see what he was really like? and that, in that sense, he achieved what he wanted to.

he became more famous. i think those are two very different things. people finding out what he's supposedly really like, and wanting to be more famous. i mean, he wanted to be more famous, so he went on the programme. he took 400 grand and he became more famous. it's got absolutely nothing to do with, um, addressing the general public and making politics more human. i mean, that's clearly completely nonsense. erm, and saying, "i want people to know who...who...who i am." we know who you are. you're the former health secretary and that was the job you were asked to do, and at the moment you're an mp and that's the job you're meant to be doing. well, talking about trying to hold him to account, matt hancock being in the jungle certainly gave you an opportunity to feature him on the front page. what did you do with it? well, this was one of those situations where there were just too many jokes. so, we started off by saying the tories find a vote winner at last because he kept winning the things. then there was a picture of him with gunk being poured on top of him with a pair of goggles

on and him saying, "this protective equipment is useless," because that's really what we should be talking about. then we had a picture of him and someone saying, "400 grand? it's money for old grope," which is a reasonable analysis of why he's there. this is, erm, this is a grim winterfor lots and lots of people. yes. there's a cost of living crisis. inflation is pretty rampant still. erm, what do you think the role of satire is in our lives, and how is it more important in a time of struggle? well, i was literally on a train the other dayjust coming down from blackpool and a woman just passed me a note. it said, "thanks to you and the private eye team for giving us something "to laugh about in this crazy world." ijust thought, "that's incredibly sweet of you to do that." but also... just a random womanjust...? yeah, yeah. it was just someone who was on the train. shoved it at me. and i thought, well, a, that is...is one of the points, it is just to give you something to laugh and to say, "this is funny." i mean there is humour right... right in the darkest, erm, er, of these situations.

let me ask on behalf of the people who do laugh. you've done have i got news for you for 32 years? yeah. wow. you've outlasted mock the week. you've outlasted the mash report. it's a long time. i mean, will you carry on doing it as long as they'll have you? erm, i'll carry on doing it until... until we're sacked, erm... he chuckles which, you know, could be any...any time soon. l private eye, erm, i get slightly more say in because i'm the editor, erm, but, erm, again, erm, i...i can't think of a betterjob. i hope that means that we're going to carry on seeing you on our screens next year and also this time next year talking about your next annual. yeah, well, i hope it's... it's less eventful. ian hislop, it was very good to talk to you. thank you. very good to talk to you.

hello again. we've got some big weather contrasts around on saturday, which of course is new year's eve. now, for england and wales, it's going to be a mild day, but there'll be some heavy rain around. colder air across northern areas, and in scotland that will bring some snow. some very different air masses across the country at the moment. strong south—westerly winds bringing the mild air across england and wales, but the colder air in scotland will continue to bring some snow showers in here. so, weather—wise, next few hours, risk of some icy stretches in scotland. could see a few centimetres of snow building in over the hills here in places. further southwards, we've got this area of rain around across england and wales. but look at these temperatures

as we head into the early morning on new year's eve — 10, ii, 12 degrees celsius. very, very mild indeed. and through the rest of saturday, it's going to stay mild across england and wales. there will be more rain coming and going. now, the grounds saturated across the south of england and wales, and this rain could actually lead to some areas of localised surface water flooding. very mild — 12 to 14 degrees in places through the afternoon. but the colder air in scotland, where there will be some places that struggle to see temperatures much above freezing. now, running closer to those new year celebrations at midnight — hogmanay, of course — we've got this area of rain extending across northern ireland and northern england. showers following to the south, where it stays quite breezy and mild. now, as this rain band starts to move into the colder air in scotland, we might actually start to see it turn to snow. there is quite a bit of uncertainty about this one, but we could see some heavy snow notjust affecting some of the hillier areas but maybe also getting down to some lower levels. as i say, there is a degree

of uncertainty in that kind of forecast, but stay in touch with the weather if you live in scotland and you're worried about those snowy conditions heading into new year's day. new year's day itself, it stays quite cold in scotland. any snow will slowly begin to fizzle in intensity. further southwards, we've got the mild air with us again. still a few showers around, but those temperatures, i2, 13 degrees celsius — that's still around 5 celsius above the december average. now, beyond that, generally those south—westerly winds will continue to blow across much of the uk well into the start of the new year. so it's going to be quite cloudy at times, with outbreaks of rain, quite breezy but, on the whole, staying on the mild side. bye— bye.

this is bbc news. i'm vishala sri—pathma. our top stories: the ukjoins a growing list of countries imposing new covid restrictions on people arriving from china. barbara walters, the american journalist who led the way for women to present major network tv news programmes, has died aged 93. the controversial online influencer andrew tate is remanded in custody in romania as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape. six years of tax returns which donald trump refused to make public have been released in the us, showing he paid nothing during his last year in the white house. and brazil lights up in honour of pele on the first of three days of national mourning for the footballing legend.