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Marina Hyde has written her last column for the Guardian after 25 years, reflecting on her career, the Opinion desk, and infamous moments including a French embassy stunt with a toy AK-47.
Marina Hyde has announced that her latest column is her final one for the Guardian, signing off after 25 years at the paper. The column was published on Friday 2 October 2026 at 12.00 CEST.
Journalism 101, a course Hyde says she has yet to complete, dictates that if you have something salient to say you should get there fast. So right now, she should mention that this is her last ever column for the Guardian. Hyde said she spent a long time wondering how to write it.
Lessons From Marina Hyde's Final Column
At first, she thought it should be about all the things she has learned, purely because that would be a hell of a lot shorter than a column about all the things she keeps failing to learn, no matter how many times she makes the mistakes. For example: if you have got a good joke, you had best put it in the intro. Hyde noted there is literally no joke in this intro.
Or: remember that people love the piss-taking until it strays into the arena of something they like, when it suddenly becomes wholly unacceptable. Take the time she wrote: Arguing on the internet is like playing real tennis: even if you win, you are still a twat. This prompted an immediate missive from a member of the Cambridge University real tennis club, which appeared on the letters page under the headline Real tennis has been served badly by this unfair slur.
The letter began: Like many Guardian readers, I have thoroughly enjoyed and always look forward to reading Marina Hyde's witty and caustic commentaries on the world about us. However … Hyde told this story at one book tour event, and then at the signing afterwards, a lovely young lady came up to get a book dedicated to her father, Jeremy.
Of course, she said: I should probably mention, he is the guy who wrote in from the Cambridge University real tennis club. Truly, the circle of life. To Jeremy, and the many other Jeremies who have written in over the years, Hyde said: we all know the real twats are rackets players. In the end, though, this could only be largely a column of thanks.
Life on the Guardian Opinion Desk
Hyde has ended up covering so many things over her time at the Guardian - from World Cups to Olympic Games to just the 47 general elections - but for the past few years, her permanent berth has been in the Opinion section. She wants to pay tribute to all the people on this hallowed desk. Hyde said she has tried to be the easiest columnist to deal with, like that means anything.
Columnists are very possibly the worst demographic in journalism. And as you know, that really DOES mean something. She tried to keep her interventions in the editorial process very limited, but she has to accept she has basically said three things to the Opinion desk, on repeat. 1. So what if it is in bad taste?
She stands by that one. 2. It is not offensive - what you have done is confuse the subject of the joke with the object of the joke. She called that genuinely obnoxious and could only apologise.
And 3. the extremely timeworn: why have you put a headline on this that makes me look like a - and then she has to use a word that even in the Guardian you are only allowed to use if it is in reported speech. The amazing editors and subeditors have borne all of that with good humour and equanimity.
Hyde does not know what they have said after they put down the phone to each other, but God knows they would have been entitled to it. Hyde said we can all live without her retrospective, but her time at the Guardian began in lively fashion, working on the Diary column.
The Osama bin Laden Puppet Stunt
Quite soon after starting, they were given a one-off Osama bin Laden puppet by the Spitting Image creators, which she was dispatched to get photographed on the steps of the French embassy in London. But why? The only problem was that the latex Osama was carrying a toy AK-47, and just as she had propped him against the door of the embassy to get the picture, it swung open and she was pulled inside by French security. Things escalated fast.
In the end, the incident was attended by 10 police squad cars and five police motorcycles, and Knightsbridge was brought to a total standstill. Again: why? Why did they do this? Genuinely the reasons for it are lost in the mists of time for Hyde.
Like so many stunts pulled by what we used to call newspapers, it made absolute sense in the context of the news cycle in which it happened, and makes absolutely no sense once ripped from those temporal moorings. But over two decades on, Hyde would obviously like to thank the various police forces on the scene - French, Met, and diplomatic - for deciding not to press charges, which would, she senses, have made the rest of her so-called career rather tricky.
Social Media and the Rob Lowe Column
Over time, that old Fleet Street wild west gave way to the digital wild west in which we live now - a place of no less remarkable incident. One of the bizarre things that came with the advent of social media was seeing which famous people reposted your columns. Probably Hyde's favourite was when she wrote one about a new ITV show where Rob Lowe played a police chief in Brexit Britain.
She noted: I know - how did it not get a second season? In the course of this column, Hyde happened to digress all the way back to that time in 1988 when Rob was campaigning for Michael Dukakis at the Democratic national convention, on the eve of which he ended up making a sex tape in his convention hotel in Georgia with two girls, one of whom was 16.
Hyde then mentioned that at her school, they were all totally thrilled and excited when that story came out, because it meant that Rob Lowe was definitely open to sex with 16-year-old girls. Cf so what if it is in bad taste? Rob Lowe reposted this column, particularly bearing in mind that for the past few years his timeline had consisted of incredibly wholesome content about dropping his children off at university and so on.
Did it indicate that he still had a bit of the animal left in him - Hyde's preferred reading, as she does not think you ever truly kill it off - or had he simply not read through to the relevant bit? We will, Hyde thinks, never really know - and she always enjoyed such mysteries.
While we let that one settle, it feels like a great moment to begin Hyde's lengthy thanks to the Guardian's legal department, with whom it may not surprise you to learn she has shared many, many intense moments over the years.
Guardian Final Column 25 Years French Embassy Stunt Opinion Desk
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