So is Hello! really wooing Amanda?

The Forsyte Saga and Sven and Ulrika are not the only dramas in town. Who is to become the new king or queen of Hello! magazine is an equally tangled affair, with half truths, thrusting ambition and self-promotion all combining to compelling effect.

Phil Hall, the clever former editor of the News of the World who has been editor of Hello! for 12 months, resigned last Thursday amid rumours that he and the celebrity magazine's charismatic Spanish owner, Eduardo Sanchez, had fallen out following a series of discussions about the direction of the title. Three days later, a story appeared in The Observer claiming that Amanda Platell was to take over from Hall, who is moving to the Press Association, where he will head up its contracting publishing business in Leeds.

Platell is William Hague's former spin doctor, who upset the Tory applecart during the last General Election campaign when she kept a secret video diary, which she sold to Channel 4. Renowned for her sassy charm and striking looks, she is good at getting what she wants and there is no question that Hello! would suit her - which is different from saying that she would suit Hello!.

She is a former editor of the Sunday Mirror and, more recently, the Sunday Express, where she was admired by staff but sidelined by the then chairman Lord Hollick. Her record in the editing chair was not notably successful. She wasn't at The Mirror long enough for anyone to make a fair judgment of her, and made no discernible impression on the Sunday Express's downward slide. The author of a bodice-ripping novel, Scandal (laced with sex, betrayal and intrigue), she currently writes a column for the New Statesman and for GQ, and is about to stand in for Edwina Currie on Sunday nights on Radio Five Live.

Her record at Central Office was no less mixed than her journalism. She was notably loyal to William Hague - until she started making secret video recordings - but won few friends in the party outside his immediate circle. Indeed, her loyalty was so fierce that in the eyes of some it added to a sense of siege around the doomed leader. (So great was this that at one point Francis Maude and Michael Portillo went to Hague and threatened "either she goes or we go". Hague stood by her, and their bluff was called.)

Negotiations with the glamorous antipodean, with her penchant for short, red skirts and thick, red lipstick, are, according to The Observer at least, "at the final stage", and "Amanda is really up for it ... she has an instinctive feel for what makes the pulse of middle Britain race".

Curiously, the story was completely unsourced. There was no comment from anyone at Hello!, no quote from Platell, and no statement from Sanchez. Instead, it was left to a "source close to the deal", and "Platell's friends" to justify the "Hague spin doctor to run Hello!" headline. "It's nonsense, as far as I know, that Platell is taking over," Hall told the Evening Standard. "In fact, I have been asked to stay on as a consultant, and I happen to think that the appointment will come from within."

A friend of Hall's went further, suggesting that Platell was the source of The Observer story in what amounted to a crude attempt to catch Sanchez's eye. Surely not. But, then again, Platell has been known in the past to set her own agenda. Ask William Hague.

Others think she is just what Hello! needs. Conspiracy theorists within the magazine's lovely South Bank offices see the hand of Phil Hall - who fell out with Platell over the Lord Archer perjury story while she was at Conservative Central Office - in The Observer story. Could Hall have planted The Observer piece as a pre-emptive strike against Platell, intending to torpedo her chances of ever getting to the negotiating table with Sanchez? In that case, the "friends of Platell" are in fact "friends of Hall" - particularly those who told The Observer that she "doesn't know many showbiz people" and is "not best mates with Posh".

"She would be absolutely brilliant at it," said Neil Reading, who runs a leading showbiz PR company. "She is the sort of person you want to do business with and she never reneges on a deal. She was fabulous to work with when she was running the Sunday Mirror and then the Sunday Express."

PLATELL herself is making no comment. But by refusing to deny or confirm her interest in the job, she does nothing to dampen speculation. It is sure enough that she would like the job, and she is not without supporters, but those who remember the stink caused by her video diary suspect it may be something she is having trouble living down. While in Fleet Street little opprobrium is attached to a journalist who gets the sack because their face doesn't fit, Platell may have committed the unforgivable with her video diary.

Hello! is saying next to nothing, but it is known that a number of possible replacements have been sounded out. One is Martin Townsend, editor of the Sunday Express and a former editor of OK!. Internal candidates include Hello!'s current deputy editor, Roger Kasper, and Maggie Kuomi, Hello!'s founding editor, is also reported to be on the short list.

Whatever the nature of the contact between Platell and the magazine, her candidacy is likely to meet stiff resistance. One senior voice in the organisation told me: "Just think about it: what are the chances of a magazine like Hello!, which lives or dies by the trust it can instil in those it features, employing somebody who could do a thing like hide a video camera in her handbag? It's unimaginable."

Unimaginable to some, apparently, but Ms Platell is unlikely to give up without a fight.