V&A exhibits 'mayhem' of the Private Eye office

Curators from the Victoria and Albert Museum have plundered the offices of satirical magazine Private Eye to give a glimpse of the creative chaos behind the scenes.

Julius Bryant, of the V&A, said he wanted to give visitors a sense of how the magazine was produced by editor Ian Hislop and his team in Soho.

The exhibition includes a chair once owned by Robert Maxwell, the Mirror proprietor whose pension dealings the magazine exposed. It was purchased as a souvenir after his death.

Mr Bryant said: "What I really wanted to get across was the creative mayhem in the editor's office, the Aladdin's cave of detritus."

Private Eye: The First 50 Years opens tomorrow