[2] On his return to Britain he was educated at Ardingly College, an independent boarding school, where he became head boy, and began his satirical career directing and appearing in revues alongside Nick Newman.

[3] Hislop's and Newman's association continued when they attended Oxford University together; later they worked together at Private Eye and on comedy scriptwriting jobs.

Hislop applied to read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, but changed to English literature before arriving at Magdalen College.

[7][8] At Oxford, Hislop revived and edited the magazine Passing Wind,[6] for which he interviewed Richard Ingrams, who was then editor of Private Eye, and Peter Cook, then the majority shareholder.

A parody of The Observer magazine's "Room of My Own" feature, it described an IRA prisoner on the dirty protest decorating his cell in "fetching brown".

[10] As editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop is reputedly the most sued man in English legal history,[10][11] although he is not involved in as many libel actions as he once was.

[12] A libel case was brought against Private Eye and Hislop in 1986 by the publisher Robert Maxwell after the magazine accused him of funding Labour leader Neil Kinnock's travel expenses as a means of gaining a peerage.

After his death in 1991, Maxwell was revealed to be an extensive fraudster, illegally drawing on his companies' pension funds; his last writ for libel against the Eye and Hislop was about this "malicious" and "mendacious" claim.

[16] In January 2022, Hislop alongside fellow Eye journalists Richard Brooks and Solomon Hughes presented evidence on MPs' conduct to the House of Commons' Standards Committee.

Hislop, usually in partnership with Nick Newman, was a scriptwriter on the 1980s political satire series Spitting Image, in which puppets were used to depict well-known figures, mostly politicians.

[20] With regular writing partner Nick Newman, Hislop wrote the BBC Radio 4 series Gush, a satire based on the first Gulf War, in the style of Jeffrey Archer.

With Newman he also wrote the family-friendly satirical sitcom My Dad's the Prime Minister and in the early nineties for the Dawn French vehicle Murder Most Horrid.

Hislop and Newman wrote the Radio 4 series The News at Bedtime, a satire on fairy tales which aired over the 2009 Christmas season.

The series starred Jack Dee as John Tweedledum and Peter Capaldi as Jim Tweedledee; the two present the "news of the day" in the world of fairy tales, while arguing with each other as did their namesakes.

[23] He has also written and presented factual programmes for Radio 4 about such subjects as tax rebellions, female hymn composers, scouting and patron saints of Britain and Ireland.

The former, Ian Hislop Goes off the Rails, about the Beeching Report and its impact on the British railway network, was first aired on 2 October 2008, and achieved the second-highest audience to date for any BBC Four programme (and the highest for a documentary) with 1.3 million viewers.

His series on Victorian social reformers, Ian Hislop's Age of the Do-Gooders, aired on BBC Two beginning on 29 November 2010.

[27] In another episode he criticised the premise of capital punishment, something which had been advocated by Conservative panel member Priti Patel,[29] and more recently has discussed Britain's vote to leave the European Union.

[47] He has also been highly critical of the leadership of the European Union, calling for a referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in a 2003 recording of Have I Got News for You.

"[50] He has expressed dismay over the level of public debate in the aftermath of Britain's vote to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump, describing it as Orwellian in nature, saying that "one is unsure whether to feel relieved at the sense of déjà vu or worried about the possibility of history repeating itself, not as farce, but as tragedy again".