The Press: The Promised Punch

In the eight months since he stepped into Punch’s editor’s chair, Malcolm Muggeridge has been trying to put the punch back into Britain’s famed but ailing weekly humor magazine. Last week ex-Newsman (London Daily Telegraph) Muggeridge broke the most sacrosanct Punch tradition of all: he changed the cover for the first time in 109 years. For a special issue on British television, Muggeridge replaced Punch’s elves, capering gnomes and rogues with caricatures of Britons debating commercially sponsored-TV on the British Broadcasting Corp. (among the recognizable faces: Press Lords Beaverbrook, Rothermere, Camrose and the Archbishop of Canterbury). “The BBC,” said Muggeridge with characteristic irreverence, “is a heaven-sent Punch target because it is one of those bloody things that takes itself seriously, believes it has a mission, and is pompous about it. All things Punch is interested in puncturing.”

News, Not Jokes. Tampering with the cover is not the only thing Muggeridge has done. Under his regime, writing and drawing are firmly tied to the news (“If a joke has no relevance, or its connections are obsolete, it’s out”). As a result, putting Punch to press—once a quiet, timeless ritual—now has all the excitement of a city room covering a fast-breaking, big news story. Articles on the uproar in Iran are jammed in at press time, issues are held to make them more timely, reports on the United Nations, Korea and hydrogen bomb replace such old Punch standbys as essays on art colleges, traveling theaters or poems about water wagtails. Recently, when Tito came to London, Punch rebelled against treating Communist Tito with the usual diplomatic amenities, printed the harshest comment in the British press on his visit.

Muggeridge himself often writes a biting editorial, in a recent issue gave these satirical guides on how to be a successful British diplomat: “1) When an international agreement is unilaterally denounced, insure that any formal protests you are instructed to make are as hesitant and equivocal as possible … 2) Remember that nowadays the glittering prizes are given for feats of demolition, not of construction . . . Every diplomat carries a peerage in his knapsack, provided only that he keeps retreating … 3) Do not allow seeming setbacks to lower your spirit. Rather, they should be made the occasion for displaying even more complacency and self-satisfaction than before . . . 4) In politics, you should incline to the left. If you can combine this with ample private means and socially distinguished connections, so much the better.

The contrast between your private cir cumstances and your political professions will serve to draw attention to you . . . 5) To be invited to tea with Mr. Vishinsky is a triumph, as is a smile won from Mr. Nehru or from Marshal Tito; but political exiles must ever be anathema to you. Nor should any opportunity ever be missed of taking a sly dig at Americans and their policies. Indeed, potential allies everywhere should be treated as somewhat ludicrous, if not downright despicable.” Laughs, Not Sniggers. Muggeridge is also dead set against the kind of whimsy, long a Punch specialty, with which “the middle classes try to comfort themselves that the world hasn’t changed, that all things that happen are only funny vari ants on what happened before. It’s a no tion that all immense social events of recent time can be translated into whimsical facetiousness. It’s phony . . . It’s a nervous snigger rather than a laugh.” In producing laughs instead of sniggers, Muggeridge has also stirred up protests from readers that Punch’s lampooning is in bad taste. He is not worried. “Good taste and humor,” says he, “are a contra diction in terms, like a chaste whore. I think Punch’s ban on sex is wrong, be cause I think sex is funny … I will gently move towards more sex. If it’s genuinely funny, in it goes.” Thus far Muggeridge’s new Punch is paying off. In the last six months, circulation has risen by 6,000 (to 139,677), the first increase in six years, and last week World Press News, the British trade weekly, noticed a “wonderfully fresh vitality [in] Punch.”