A quiet retirement is not really on the cards for Oldie Richard Ingrams

And, sure enough, his resignation last month as editor of The Oldie, the magazine he co-founded 22 years ago, turns out to be the result of a long-running personality clash with the publisher, James Pembroke, who bought the magazine in 2007.
Speaking from his home in Aldworth this week, Mr Ingrams said that, when the end came, it did so “rather out of the blue.” But the irrepressible 76-year-old is far from depressed.
He said: “It’s early days still. I have no definitive plans. I shall await events. Meanwhile I have my book to finish.”
The tome will focus on major miscarriages of justice investigated by a hero of his, the late broadcaster and journalist Ludovic Kennedy. Mr Ingrams has spent his career harrying the powerful and corrupt and pricking the pomposity of the rich and famous.
He has seen off such formidable adversaries as the late publisher Robert Maxwell, who Private Eye famously dubbed the Bouncing Czech.
Mr Ingrams – who once listed his hobby in Who’s Who as “litigation” – said, with something close to nostalgia: “He was a very big suer...you don’t get that quite so much, these days.”
Asked to name other ‘favourite’ enemies, he rattles off a list including Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, disgraced public relations man Max Clifford and the late billionaire entrepreneur Sir James Goldsmith, who infamously tried to financially ruin Mr Ingrams and his organ.
He said: "He tried to use the law of criminal libel which has mercifully been abolished since, so perhaps some good came of that.”
Mr Ingrams is still linked in the public imagination to Private Eye and, although he resigned in 1986, is still proud of its achievements.
“We were the first publication to name the Kray brothers as gangsters. Before that, the press had written about them but never named them,” he said.
Perhaps unsuprisingly then, Mr Ingrams is dismissive of Lord Leveson’s report on press ethics.
He said: “There’s a real danger of the press becoming much too cautious. I think, in a way, we’re seeing evidence of that already.”
Self censorship of the media is compounded, he feels, by another of his bugbears, political correctness - not something Mr Ingrams has personally been accused of.
He added: “Speaking your mind is increasingly dodgy and I believe Leveson has had a chilling effect.”
The possibility of secret trials is another “very dangerous precedent” that is exercising Mr Ingrams’ mind. For the first time in British legal history, the Crown Prosecution Service is seeking to hold a major terrorism trial behind closed doors, with anonymised defendants.
Mr Ingrams said: “It’s already happening to a major extent in the family courts, although the rules have been relaxed a bit recently.
"But the latest idea that terrorism trials can be held in secret is very dangerous. My book is about miscarriages of justice from the ‘70s and ‘80s but the new cause for concern is that national security is used as an excuse to shut people up.”
He added: “The argument surrounding the Chilcot inquiry (into the Iraq war) is typical. I don’t think the full facts are going to be made available and the excuse is that national security would be damaged if conversations between Bush and Blair are made public.”
Meanwhile Mr Ingrams’ spat with Mr Pembroke looks unlikely to be resolved any time soon.
Despite rumours of a rapprochement and return to the magazine he co-founded, Mr Ingrams said: “It’s very hard to see, with this guy in charge. But you never know. It was a trivial row initially but I said I was too old to attend a disciplinary hearing and resigned. “Never mind, something will turn up. It always does.”