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New Punch likely to strike above the belt

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SCMP Reporter

The manic, hooked nose of Mr Punch is back, as Britain's oldest humorous magazine returns with a vengeance and a multi-million pound cash injection today after an absence of four years.

The magazine which was best known for its place in dentists' waiting rooms went out of business after 150 years in 1992 because in an age of stabbing satire its form of laid-back humour was well out of tune with the times.

The new version - which bears the print 'Issue 7889' - is not all that different from the magazine which claimed the centre ground of British humorous writing for decades with a mixture of small cartoons and celebrity columns written by established, and even hackneyed, names of yesteryear.

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Punch claimed several firsts in its history. It is said to have first used the term cartoon to describe a humorous drawing, rather than the preparatory sketch for a painting.

In the 19th Century, it tore into the Whig and Tory parties of the day - but broke magazine tradition by eschewing the near pornographic attacks of other scandal sheets of the time.

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Novelist William Thackeray resigned twice in anger at other people's articles, and Charles Dickens suffered the indignity of having a piece turned down.

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