Last October Rats in a Sack reported how the New Statesman had a new gossip columnist – and it appeared at first glance to be the late, great Christopher Hitchens (died, 2011). The Staggers unveiled a column called The Hitch, described as “the New Statesman’s gossip columnist, spreading mischief and innuendo wherever he goes”, illustrated with a pen portrait of Hitchens puffing away on a cigarette.
The launch, however, did not go down well with Hitchens’s family, who took understandable umbrage at having his name appropriated without their permission.
Suggested Reading
Hurrah for the Rothermeres!
Hitch 2.0 – Christopher’s brother and oddball Mail on Sunday columnist Peter – wrote to Will Lloyd, the Statesman’s deputy editor, saying: “Well, you didn’t ask me, Will, or if you did you must have used smoke signals or semaphore. I am quite easy to find. I have slight misgivings, for obvious reasons, about the decision to portray him while smoking.” (Christopher suffered oesophageal cancer following a lifetime of enthusiastic cigarette chomping).
Six days later The Hitch was quietly shelved, the column being renamed the Pygge, after the pseudonymous Edward Pygge character used by numerous New Statesman writers over the years, including Ian Hamilton and Clive James.
Suggested Reading
Andy Burnham’s wife and a completely invented social media story
Now it seems the Pygge itself is no more. Its last dispatch was almost five months ago, with a mischievous story about Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party allegedly making common cause with anti-small boats protestors in Bristol, while its X account has similarly not been updated since.
With Kevin Maguire, who’s written the magazine’s Commons Confidential column for two decades, also departing last year to spend more time with his sparring partner Andrew Pierce, it means the magazine has no diary or gossip column for the first time in recent memory.
Most popular
Pakistan’s solar miracle – how the hell did they do it?
Andy Burnham v London
Meet Young Bob, the teen Christian nationalist star of the UK’s hard right
A history of Brexit in 256 disasters
