You don't need reminding. Hislop, at 38, has had a busy career. The editor of the cult satirical magazine Private Eye for 12 years, he's also a dab hand at television (do we need reminding?) and at column writing (he has one in The Sunday Telegraph). He also manages to wear all this very lightly as he sips tea in the very la-di-dah environs of the Imperial Hotel.

It's far cry from what he's been doing since he landed in New Delhi - Friday afternoon at Gandhiji's samadhi, dinner at Karim's near Jama Masjid, a morning meeting with Mani Shanker Aiyar (sensible,he is after all, a columnist with The Indian Express), and Saturday afternoon talking to yuppie youngsters at ``one of the big shopping mall type of things'', which we assume correctly is the Priya complex. ``I was very impressed with this young man, who foxed us by saying that he didn't want us to record him because we would be stealing his soul. But I'm more inclined to believe his latter version - he didn't want his mother to see him smoking,'' says Hislop, who is very impressed with the advances middle class India has made.

So why would Hislop, baseball cap in hand, clad in cotton shirt and baggy trousers be doing the touristy thing? ``Well, because the BBC asked me whether I'd like to take a paid holiday for two-and-a-half weeks to India and I said why not?,'' he says, sounding suspiciously like Barry Norman. One of the many things Hislop does is make documentaries. The one he's working on currently is part of the Great Train Journeys series. East to West, which will be an hourlong, has already taken Hislop from Calcutta to Delhi. From then on, he travels to Agra, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Jaipur.

Since Hislop is from Private Eye and has a formidable reputation of not taking the official position on anything, he's trying to be different. So instead of beginning with Calcutta's grindingly grim slums, East to West will begin with Calcutta's gleamingly clean Metro. ``That's not what people expect,'' he says with a smile one is sure has been described several times as impish.

Impishness is hard to come by in these Clintonian times, though. ``Bill Clinton is making it very hard for us these days,'' he says with mock sadness. ``Everything that's happening is so absurd, it's tough to surpass it.'' Added to that is Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and company's earnestness and Princess Diana's death, and you can imagine that life hasn't been a barrel of laughs for Hislop lately. But thanks to Blair's thin skin, they're getting by. ``Blair and company hate criticism, so it's greatfor us. The only problem is he's genuinely clean, unlike Clinton.''

After all, Private Eye, established by comedian Peter Cook in 1961, does have 400 years of rude satire to look up to. ``It's an immense public responsibility,'' says Hislop, donning a fake self-important air. In these recessionary times, Private Eye manages to sell 1,80,000 copies, without being owned by Rupert Murdoch. ``I notice, by the way, that Murdoch had breakfast with your prime minister. It starts with breakfast, goes on to lunch, and soon he's bought the whole country,'' he says. Of course, we take him seriously.

Hislop was reading at Oxford when he interviewed Cook for the student magazine. He asked him to meet the Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams who let him write jokes (Hislop went on to write and perform in Edinburgh's rich fringe circuit). When Ingrams retired as editor after 23 years, Hislop got the job. ``But it doesn't pay anyone of us enough for us to be doing just that. For instance, currently themagazine is run by Francis Wheen. He writes for The Guardian,'' says Hislop.

Hislop finds India more prosperous than it was 12 years ago - his last visit - but is alarmed at the level of cynicism about politicians. He's also happy to tell us that India's propaganda must be good - apparently we're being regarded as a highly stable economy as our Asian neighbours come crashing down around us. What is a little unnerving, though, is that it isn't a joke.