Heat of the moment

Celebland can be a cruel, catty place. This week, as Heat magazine celebrates an extraordinary 106 per cent year-on- year circulation rise, the editors of rival showbiz titles have been lining up to spoil the party.

"I don't look at Heat very much," claims Jane Ennis, editor of Now. Phil Hall, editor-in-chief of Hello!, dismisses his opponent as a "mickey-taking youth magazine which has little advertising". Even Hot Stars, the Heat clone given away with OK!, jumps in to knock its mentor. "There is little in it that I haven't seen or heard before," sneers editor Martin Smith. "And it still sells only half as many copies as Hot Stars and OK!."

Not that Mark Frith is bothered. Frith, who as editor has taken Heat from sales of 70,000 to 355,904 in less than two years, is equally spiky. "Now is a weird magazine - the sort my auntie would buy if she had a spare quid," he says. "I'm astonished Jane doesn't read Heat - in her position I'd read every word."

OK! and Hello! are "naff " - "how naff is it to sell your wedding, telling friends not to bring cameras as you'd sewn up picture rights?" As for the "rubbish" that passes as Hot Stars: "I don't know how the team behind it can look at their CVs without shame." Miaow.

Behind the war of words lies the fiercest circulation war yet in the celebrity-magazine sector. In the past six months, Now and Heat have continued to boom as Hello!'s sales dropped by 37 per cent and OK!'s by 25 per cent. The six-month comparison is not entirely fair, as Hello! and OK! were previously boosted by bulk sales through newspaper promotions, but it is clear that the young upstarts have hit the more reverential showbiz magazines. Now's 552,136 newsstand sales currently beat Hello!'s by almost 130,000. Heat, which came close to closing in 1999, sells 340,000 copies at full price, compared with 326,000 for OK!. "Next time we'll start with a four," predicts Frith.

He attributes Heat's success to its understanding of our celebrity culture, and the access it offers. "The stars love the magazine - Victoria Beckham, Davina McCall, Kylie, Zoe Ball all give very limited inter-views to anyone else, but they will talk to Heat." The weekly's witty and knowing tone reflects what the readers - mainly women in their twenties and late teens - will be gossiping about.

"Celebrities are their main currency when they meet up at a bar - they'll say, 'Did you hear Ali G on Radio 1?', or 'Have you heard what Kylie said?'" But not all celebrities are equal. Frith would have turned down free coverage of Joan Collins's wedding, even though OK! paid almost £400,000. "Heat isn't Joan Collins or Neil and Christine Hamilton," he says. "When the Hamiltons were on OK!'s cover, it was their lowest-selling issue of the year."

Managing director Louise Matthews - brought in two years ago to relaunch what was originally a general entertainment magazine as a more focused women's celebrity title - insists that the magazine is "fan-tastically profitable". A Heat TV show is planned this year.

But its success does not unduly worry Hello!, at least in public. Phil Hall is keen to differentiate Heat and Now from his more "upmarket" title. "It's like comparing The Sun and the Daily Mail," he says. "We achieved record ad revenue last year - more than £10 million - and our ABC1 reach has risen to more than 70 per cent. Heat's ironic tone is not for us - if anything, we're going to take another step upmarket." What Hello! can offer, Hall says, is exclusive access to A-list stars. "In 2000, we had 11 A-list Hollywood stars on the cover; last year it was 18. People want celebrities with substance and real talent."

Like Frith, Hall considers OK!'s Joan Collins deal a mistake. "Hello! didn't even compete for it," he says. He believes that Richard Desmond, proprietor of OK!, needed stories to push during a TV ad campaign he had booked. "He's spending huge sums to try to turn things around at OK! If you're spending £1 million (on ads and buy-ups) to achieve a circulation rise of 100,000, it's shoot-yourself-in-the-foot stuff. It's like a heroin addiction: once you take away this TV advertising, the numbers will collapse."