Christopher Booker, first editor of Private Eye, dies
Wednesday, July 3, 2019 at 17:43 
Sorry to hear that journalist and writer Christopher Booker, the first editor of Private Eye, has died.
In 2007 Forest was delighted to host a special event to mark the publication of ‘Scared To Death: From BSE to Global Warming’, a book he co-wrote with Richard North.
One of the chapters was on passive smoking. Like us, Booker looked at the evidence and was highly dubious that ‘secondhand smoke’ was a significant risk to non-smokers.
He wrote:
For years, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on trying to prove that smokers not only harmed themselves but also the health of those around them, the anti-smoking campaigners found the evidence they wanted frustratingly elusive.
So when the two most comprehensive studies of passive smoking ever carried out each came up with findings that non-smokers living with smokers faced no significantly increased risk of cancer, their antismoking sponsors did all they could to get the reports suppressed.
In a pattern familiar from other scares, the researchers were subjected to a torrent of personal vilification. By the time a wave of smoking bans swept through Europe and America in the early 21st century, the official statistics used to justify them had become not just exaggerated but wholly fictitious.
See ‘Why you must read Booker’s new book’ (Taking Liberties)
As for the event, I wrote:
Guests came in all shapes and sizes. Politicians rubbed shoulders with journalists, lobbyists, publishers and publicists. In one corner Christopher Chope MP, in another UKIP leader (and MEP) Nigel Farage.
Madsen Pirie and Eamonn Butler (founders of the influential Adam Smith Institute) were there. So too Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers Alliance, and many more. Others, like the very senior "captain of industry" - a famous face in the City - who was attending in a personal capacity, shall remain nameless!
Remarkably Booker wrote for the Sunday Telegraph from 1961, when the paper was founded, to March this year when he retired due to ill health.
“One of my guiding principles as a journalist had long been to bring to light what I considered to be some shockingly important story which was not being properly covered elsewhere," he wrote in his final article.
Sadly, in an age when cut ‘n’ paste reporting predominates, he is literally a dying breed.
Below: Christopher Booker signs copies of Scared To Death at an event hosted by Forest at Boisdale of Belgravia in November 2007
Reader Comments (2)
I bought that book when it first came out, have read it more than once and still have it. I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet
He sounds like a decent and reasonably minded man...would liked to have met him. Loved his quote too.