Martin Newland's surprise arrival as editor at the Daily Telegraph marks the end of the establishment era at the paper. He picks up the reins when sales have seldom been worse and the product has rarely been better. The recent redesign works, and it works on you. It managed to do the thing that Newland, in his Guardian interview, claimed he saw as a priority - namely, "guarding the core values and making them accessible".
Rumours that he is a hatchet man sent in to slash staff and editorial costs in this difficult economic climate for newspapers appear to have been premature. At least, I hope that is so. If we have learnt anything from savage cost-cutting in this industry (some of which I have undertaken, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly), cutting costs inevitably cuts quality. All of the market leaders - the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph - have benefited from their rivals putting the balance sheet before the news list. And with the Independent aggressively launching its new tabloid, this is not a time for obsessing about the bottom line.
Newland says he is "a great fan of human-interest stories, stories that grab you by the throat, not by your prejudices", and wants page three to be the home for them. He must have been rather dismayed, then, turning to page three the day after that interview, to see the current operation's idea of "the human-interest story": a jolly jape about how the Welsh rugby team have gone self-catering, shopping at supermarkets and doing their own cooking in preparation for the World Cup. It certainly brought out all my prejudices. That's not human interest, it's boys' own - and boys only. The Telegraph has brilliant sports coverage. Enough already.
Newland inherits a strong team of writers, although some may be more appropriate to Charles Moore's world than to his - and, presumably, he will attract the new, younger bums he wants into the paper. I anxiously await Newland's arrival this month and a new, human Telegraph.
Anyone who thought the Sun was not taking its politics seriously should think again. During the conference season, page three was given over to the wisdom of the topless model at the seaside and to a "news in briefs special".
Jan, 20, in Bournemouth, thought "singing 'The Red Flag' . . . was a mistake"; and Jo, 24, topless at the Labour conference, pondered the merits of foundation hospitals while her poor little nipples froze up.
Then it was the Blues' week. Top totty Jo, 22, spied top Tory Theresa May. "She's got guts . . . to wear those shoes," Jo gushed, and then confessed she wouldn't be seen dead in them.
The saddest farewell I've seen in a long time came at the bottom of Nigel Dempster's last column for the Mail on Sunday. "Today I am signing off for the last time," he wrote, then ran us through the scoops he had written in that column 17 years earlier, when it started, including that Lord Longford's grandson Benjie Fraser had become a town councillor. They don't make 'em like they used to.
Until now, I had always attributed great survival skills to the woman who rubs mud into Cherie Blair's butt. Yet Carole Caplin's attack on Lynda Lee-Potter in one of her two Mail on Sunday columns was an act of self-harm. Caplin challenged LL-P to a "one-to-one" in her gym, after she repeatedly made "disparaging comments about . . . my voice, hairstyle and fashion sense and my morals". If you invited everyone who had done that to your gym, Carole, you would fill the Albert Hall.
Caplin's greatest blunder was to describe LL-P as "a sister columnist". Lynda Lee-Potter writes the most astute and assiduous column in Britain today. She not only has her finger on the pulse of Middle England, she's got it in her veins. You're no more a sister of hers, Carole, than Mo Mowlam is of Sharon Watts from EastEnders.
When her fellow designer Jeff Banks said Stella McCartney would be nothing without her father's name, he couldn't have been more wrong. These days, having Sir Paul as your dad is a liability, not a leg-up. This once great legend has become a vain man in a bad plum rinse, rich as Croesus but as tight as Gordon Brown with his money; blessed with talent yet cursed with pettiness (to the extent that he tried to have his name placed before John Lennon's on the songs they wrote together); and married to a woman the British public has yet to take to its heart.
Quite frankly, the best thing going for the Paul McCartney brand at the moment is his very talented, down-to-earth daughter Stella.
