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.