A complete run of Private Eye is for sale at Bellmans, estimate £5000-7000.
The collection estimated at £5000-8000 is on offer in the Printed Books, Maps and Manuscripts sale at West Sussex saleroom Bellmans. Specialist Nicholas Worskett says: “This is - so far as we can tell - the first time that a complete run of Private Eye has ever appeared on the open market and is ever likely to.”
It runs from the first issue on Friday, October 25, 1961, to June 2024, comprising numbers 1-1625.
A complete run of Private Eye is for sale at Bellmans, estimate £5000-7000.
The consignor, Oliver Stocken, was involved with the satirical magazine in its earliest days, although not as one of the original founders or writers. He helped to sell the first few numbers when he was at Oxford University in 1961.
The magazine was struggling for distribution. A friend of Stocken and another acquaintance suggested helping out and they came up with a plan to sell Private Eye around Oxford colleges whereby they could keep 4p out of the cover price (by then a shilling at the time, 12p) on sale or return basis. As Stocken told ATG, a pint of beer was about 11p then so it seemed a good deal.
Stocken told ATG that Private Eye told them at one point they were the fourth biggest distributor, apparently.
He became a subscriber after a while and kept every copy, filling in some gaps as he went, eventually thinking around 20 years ago he may as well obtain the first two. No 2 was acquired from a private individual for about £500 (possibly through an ad in the magazine itself) but then No 1 proved “very difficult”. Stocken managed to get through to one of the original founders who had kept a few copies and was prepared to sell: “I think it cost me £1000.”
With the Private Eyes taking up lots of space after a house move from London to West Sussex, Stocken decided to consign the full collection to auction.
After a career in finance he had retired in 1999 and his activities then included chairing the Natural History Museum and doing the same at Lord’s for the MCC (“The last 20 odd years have been great fun,” he said.)
The Private Eye advert announcing a complete run of Private Eye for sale at Bellmans, estimate £5000-7000.
In the beginning
Private Eye’s roots can be traced to Shrewsbury School in the mid-50s when four pupils - Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton, Christopher Booker and Paul Foot - set up The Walopian to provide comic and satirical scrutiny.
Following school, National Service and further education, the founders regrouped in the 1960s and, supported by future collaborators Peter Usborne, John Wells and Andrew Osmond, came up with the idea of a new satirical magazine in keeping with a new satirical decade. Osmond initially funded the magazine and is credited with giving it its new name and supervising the printing.
The invention at around the same time of the ‘photo-litho offset’ printing process enabled Private Eye to be reproduced cheaply, quickly and effectively. Of the first few numbers, only about 500 copies were printed, most on yellow paper. The first three numbers were printed in 'off-set litho' on yellow paper, the remainder printed on white paper.
White paper version
An “extremely rare white paper issue” of the first Private Eye came up for auction in March 2023 at Bonhams in London. The auction house said at the time: “Of the 500 copies of No 1 printed, 400 were on yellow paper and 100 on white paper. We can find no trace of any white paper copies having appeared on the auction market.”
It had been owned by Hunter Davies, author, journalist and broadcaster, and sold for £2500 against an estimate of £2000-3000.
