To modern eyes, many early captions were a little less than economical. Some looked as if they had been cobbled together by a drunken committee. Now you know the truth. They probably had. It quickly became clear that creative minds were often not at their best at the end of an enjoyable meal, and table members wisely decided to consider the weekly cartoon before lunch, a tradition which continued until 1969, when William Davis became editor and decided that he did not want part of his magazine edited at the meal table.

The Punch Table Plan (click here)

The content of modern cartoons is, for the most part, left entirely to cartoonists. The lunch became an opportunity for the staff and regular contributors to meet outside guests - writers, artists, politicians, business people, showbiz celebrities, even the occasional member of the Royal family. One lunch featured Norman - now Lord - Tebbit, the reigning Miss World, the writer of Blackadder, and the managing director of Woolworths. Uri Geller has bent Punch cutlery, and Lord George Brown has stomped off in a huff at being called 'not a genuine Socialist'.

The editor would normally give a short speech to open the meal and introduce the guests in turn. Norman Tebbit was introduced as 'the person least likely to be served in a Chinese takeaway.' Margaret Thatcher, incidentally, was not merely the first woman Prime Minister. She was the first woman to attend a Punch Lunch, apart from the Women's Lunch a couple of years earlier. She was a guest in 1975, breaking a male-only tradition of more than 130 years.