Alan Coren

• The Best of Alan Coren
  Robson, 416 pp, £7.50, October 1980, ISBN 0 86051 121 9
• Tissues for Men by Alan Coren
  Robson, 160 pp, £4.95, September 1980, ISBN 0 86051 116 2

Alan Coren is the editor of Punch, and also probably the funniest writer of humorous columns now in regular practice – by no means an inevitable, or even usual, combination. Punch seems to me to have one invaluable asset, its name; and one inescapable handicap, its name. The most famous long-running comic weekly in the world, it often sets me wondering whether it might not be easier to buy, or indeed write for, if it were called, say, the Hibbert Journal, or Notes and Queries, or just the Tudor Street Weekly.