Brother Act

As young men in Cardiff, Wales, the Cudlipp brothers--Percy, Reginald and Hugh--had a long-standing family bet on which would be the youngest editor of a Fleet Street newspaper. The Cudlipps were sons of a traveling salesman who could not afford to send any of them to college, so they started in journalism early. At twelve, Percy was sending poetry regularly to the South Wales News. Two years later he got a job as a copy boy on the paper, soon after became a reporter. Reg, five years younger, started on Cardiff's Western Mail and South Wales News, soon became a subeditor. But Percy thought he had cinched the bet when, at 27, he was made editor of Beaverbrook's Evening Standard. He reckoned without Hugh, seven years his junior.

Hugh started out in Cardiff as his brothers did, arrived in London, at 20, as features editor of the Sunday Chronicle. He won the family bet when he was named editor of the huge Sunday Pictorial (circ. 5,046,640) at 24. and became the youngest newspaper editor on Fleet Street. This year he also became editorial director of the Pic's sister, the London Daily Mirror (circ. 4,432,700), biggest daily newspaper in the world. Meanwhile. Percy moved over to the Laborite Daily Herald (circ. 1,965,504) in 1938, two years later became its editor.

Only brother Reg had not made his way into an editor's chair, though he was close to it: he became deputy editor of News of the World (circ. 8,230,158), world's biggest weekly. This week Reg Cudlipp made it three straight for the Cudlipp boys.

At 43. he was named editor of News of the World. Thus the combined newspaper circulation now directed by the three Cudlipp brothers is 19,675,002. Reg is regarded by some Fleet Streeters as the "most unlikely fellow" to edit the wildly sensational News of the World, since, as brother Percy says, "Reg is the distinguished one--could have been a bishop."

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