That’s the way to do it!

ONE of those extravagant reliefs from the realities of life’ was Charles Dickens’s verdict on Punch and Judy shows, in a letter written in the winter of 1849. Two centuries earlier, Charles II’s view had evidently been similar. In October 1662, the King rewarded one Pietro Gimonde, a puppeteer from northern Italy known as Signor Bologna, with a gold medal and chain valued at the considerable sum of £25 for a special performance of an ‘Italian puppet play’ at Whitehall.

For generations of British children, Punch and Judy shows performed in striped canvas booths by travelling puppeteers at the seaside, on city streets and at country fairs have given just such respite from everyday reality.

‘It is an outrageous joke which no one would think of regarding as a model of conduct’