Sources For Private Eye's Sauce

The 7 December issue of Private Eye has an amusing little piece about the Conservative MP for the New Forest, Dr Julian Lewis.

Lewis recently resigned from the Oxford Union in protest at the decision to invite Laurel and Hardy (sorry Nick Griffin and David Irving) to address the union. Private Eye points out that when Lewis ran the Coalition for Peace Through Security in Whitehall in the 1980s, he went out of his way to wine and dine NF organiser Dave Jones, who has since become one of the main BNP activists around east Manchester. Lewis wanted information from Jones on CND activists.

When reading Private Eye though, it is always interesting to consider where the information published actually comes from. In this case, we are told the meeting of great minds occurred after Jones wrote to Lewis. The number of people who would be aware of that - and indeed would remember it 20 years later - has to be very slim indeed.

Would I be correct in guessing that the source for the story is in fact none other than the BNP's Dave Jones - who has after all been a regular writer of turgid letters to Private Eye over many years?

The BNP's Dave Jones looks nervously away from his ever hungry wife Bev.