Listen for the Roars

Librettist W. S. Gilbert once trapped the editor of Punch with a bland question: Were many jokes sent in? "Hundreds." said the editor. "Then," snapped Gilbert, "why don't you print some of them?" Like some Englishmen, Americans have long looked on Punch's quiet brand of British fun with blank amazement. But since the war, Punch has been trying to broaden its audience (TIME, June 2, 1947). Now, to prove that even U.S. readers can laugh at today's Punch (circ. 136,537), its editors have authorized a collection of The Best Cartoons from Punch (Simon & Schuster; $3) and are listening for the roars.

Missing are the traditional cartoons that were merely illustrations for dialogue. Punch's modern jokes are in the drawings themselves, broad, often wildly exaggerated cartoons by Britain's best$#151;Emett, Anton, Sprod, Francois, ffolkes--with only a helpful nudge or two from the captions. And most of the characters are the kind Americans can understand: taxi drivers, sidewalk hawkers, boy geniuses, women in telephone booths, snake charmers, acrobats, psychoanalysts, woolly dogs, fancy new cars and rickety old ones.

Britons, the running text explains, are pretty much like Americans:

P: The British must cope with television, which gives the usual trouble (Santa Claus fights his way to the chimney through a forest of TV aerials).

P: Backseat drivers are much the same (cave wife being dragged by caveman: "Avoid loose stones, and watch out for the Brontosaurus round the corner").

P: Britons are psychoanalyzed (man on the couch to his analyst, who is sound asleep in a chair behind him: ". . . and always, I feel that I'm an awful bore").

As a commentator on manners & morals, Punch has come a lot closer to what the U.S. thinks is funny. But Best Cartoons is still as British as tea & cakes. The fun is gentle and slightly reserved, and there are no rowdy burlesques of sex.

Writes Humorist A. P. Herbert in the foreword: "[There is] nothing to compare . . . with Peter Arno's famous couple in bed ('Wake up, you mutt. We're getting married today'). The nearest thing to a sexy joke that I can remember seeing in Punch was this: The Mayor of Liverpool, solemnly commemorating and confirming the long association of Liverpool with the River Mersey, threw a gold ring into the river. Punch said: 'Now that Liverpool has been formally wedded to the Mersey, many are saying it is about time that Manchester did the right thing by the Ship Canal.' "

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