The latest Private Eye's Street of Shame opens with an item on Joan Smith, the new Executive Director of Hacked Off. She promises to target companies that advertise in media signed up to the government-unapproved IPSO which launches next month and hopes to succeed where the PCC signally failed and regulate some of our newspapers. Private Eye is not IPSO-friendly but is Hacked Off-hostile while Hacked Off itself is IPSO-hostile but presently merely cool towards media that are 'unregulated' - such as the Eye.
No space was found to remind us that Joan's arrival in our post-Leveson world introduces a personal element to the ding-dong between the Eye and Hacked Off. Her former spouse is one Francis Wheen, Private Eye's deputy editor, who has much to do with Street of Shame and regularly froths in various places against Hacked Off's outrages (when he's not sulking over the existence of psychics, God, gods, aromatherapists, scented candle magic and anything else not sanctioned by white-coated geeks).
I wonder whether Mr W dispatched a congrats to Joan on her appointment. I do hope so. He strikes me as a gallant sort.
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