The once-a-fortnight delivery of Private Eye (Royal Mail permitting) is one of my keenest pleasures in life, and has been through most of the 50 years of the magazine’s existence. I like its sometimes vicious humour, its political incorrectness, its gleeful pricking of pomposity and exposure of pseudery (a sin the Eye invented). I like its fearless campaigning and its determination to print stories that powerful people don’t want printing — the best definition of what constitutes news.

Chiefly, though, I like the way it makes its readers feel part of a select group of cognoscenti — even if they now number half a million and more. We are people who know what it is to discuss Uganda, who rarely refer to The Queen except as Brenda, and who understand that only in some parallel universe will we discover how a story will really end on Page 94.

The magazine’s half-century is being celebrated, among other ways, with a fine new exhibition that has just opened at the V&A. I was invited to the press launch and rashly announced that, for the Eye, I was prepared to hazard a Monday morning rush-hour journey to London.

Nemesis heard the announcement and arranged one of those lorry prangs on the M40 that I described with some anger here last week. The road was completely closed from Stokenchurch, causing a queue back to Oxford. My Oxford Tube ride (Express service, so called!), lasted more than three-and-a-half hours along a rural route the driver had the good sense to choose. Still, I had a comfortable front row seat, the newspapers to read and, as we advanced at walking pace (see below) towards West Wycombe, stunning views over the lovely Buckinghamshire countryside in autumn sunshine.

After a pleasant stroll through Hyde Park and Knightsbridge, I arrived at the V&A’s Studio Gallery just in time to hear the Eye’s editor Ian Hislop give his speech to introduce Private Eye: The First 50 Years.

In this he paid proper tribute to the magazine’s true stars, its cartoonists. “Every fortnight, we offer 25 beautifully drawn, funny jokes. That’s why people buy Private Eye.”

A section of the exhibition features the original artwork for more than 120 of the Eye’s finest cartoons — the work of such as Ed McLachlan, Ken Pyne, Martin Honeysett, Barry Fantoni, Michael Heath and Nicholas Garland.

Hislop said the magazine was lucky in that its founding group of Oxford alumni, Richard Ingrams, Paul Foot and Christopher Booker, could rely on the services of their friend Willie Rushton, “one of the funniest cartoonists ever”.

When his editorship began, in succession to Ingrams in 1986, he had a brilliant cartoonist to call on in his friend, Nick Newman, who has gone on to bring a new generation of talent to readers.

He said the Eye prided itself on continuing a tradition begun by William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson. Artists such as Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman were particularly admired for their hard-hitting approach.

The late John Kent, he explained, had been especially adept at politicians, including those hard to ‘get right’. “How do you draw Neil Kinnock?” one artist had asked desperately on his succession to the Labour leadership. “You wait until John Kent has done it,” replied a colleague.

Among Kent’s greatest creations were the Eye’s Capt. Bob cartoons. An example of these is included in the show, one of a number of appearances there of items associated with Oxford’s infamous swindler.

In a case devoted to Eye memorabilia of various kinds there’s a writ received after the magazine had accused the fat fraud of tampering with his employees’ pension fund. There is also a boxed file labelled “Eye Cuts, Oct-Nov 86 (Maxwell)” and a colourful Steadman caricature following his death at sea showing “the rats leaving a sinking s**t”.

A recreation of Hislop’s cluttered office contains his actual editor’s chair, which was once used by Maxwell at the Mirror building. “It cost £500 at auction,” Hislop told me, “and was given to me by an Eye supporter.” How long would he be occupying it, I wondered, bearing in mind that he had now clocked up a quarter of a century in charge?

“No, I’m not thinking of retirement,” he chuckled. “Can you think of a better job?”

It crossed my mind that I might use this opportunity to ask for the promised fiver the Eye never paid me for an item I supplied some years ago for the Luvvies column. (Actually, it was a lift from one of my book reviews, highlighting something from Michael Blakemore so luvvie-ish that I said it deserved to be there.) But I decided not to spoil the occasion with such a minor quibble