The paper could physically print only a 32-page broadsheet the ad ratio was

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The paper could physically print only a 32-page broadsheet; the ad ratio was being pushed around the 55 per cent to benefit shareholders and board of United.The Sunday Express was a major contributor to profits but few directors seemed to understand or care that in the Rothermere camp Sir David English had his proprietor's backing to outspend The Express two to one in all areas - recruitment, buy-ups, promotion - and had far greater flexibility in the products produced.Esser and I had kept up a campaign to have more pages and, working with the then production director Murdoch Maclennan, worked out a way for the beaten-up old presses to print a back-set, pre-printed eight-page section.The chairman, Lord Stevens, agreed we could have it only if we could ensure the advertising to sustain it. The only way that could work was to use it as a City section - not really what we wanted editorially, but a least it gave us extra pagination to improve the content of the main book and give a little more to sport. Already part-works such as the Best of Britain had been introduced by Esser, and for the first time circulation lifted.The Sunday Express magazine was vitally involved because You magazine had been so instrumental in the rise of The MoS and we were well aware that better pagination, better colour and inserts were the way ahead.Is it only ironic that the then editor of the Sunday Express magazine, Dee Nolan, and her deputy, Sue Peart, are now the double act in charge of the continuing success story of You and Esser is on the management team of the Mail?Three weeks before we managed to put our extra section into place, a decision was made to increase the cover price of the paper without telling editorial.I simply could not believe that so-called professional newspaper experts could stay quiet about it. If you are going to increase the content of a can of beans by 20 per cent and want to increase the price by 10 per cent, you do it simultaneously, don't you?It would have been laughable if it weren't so tragic. The week after the price rise I had to attend a board meeting in the absence of Esser and the chairman asked why it was that the paper had lost more than 100,000 copies that weekend. There was an uncomfortable silence as I ventured that it was surprising also to editorial - surprising that we had not lost more, considering the contempt we had just shown to our readers by asking them to part with even more money for an ad-stuffed, flimsy 32- page paper.Esser was replaced by Robin Morgan, who had applied for the job of editing the Yorkshire Post. He let John Junor's column go to The Mail on Sunday - along with another 100,000 readers.The Sunday Express's fortunes did not fare well under Morgan, and other brave attempts to stop the rot have left Rosie Boycott with a newspaper now selling under a million.You will perhaps now understand why I think that, before the knives come out for Boycott, there are a lot of people who have worked at The Express who should take a close look at themselves in the mirror.The writer was deputy editor of the `Sunday Express' from 1988 to 1989 and editor of `The European' from 1992 to 1997.

Mike Walker, the gossip editor of the National Enquirer, is about to reinvent the American scandal sheet as a coast-to-coast nightly television programme. On the brink of his debut as a TV host, Mr Walker is brimming with the self-confidence of a chap who is regularly described as a journalistic legend. "I don't consider myself a gossip columnist - I'm a historian," he says "I could teach a course in Hollywood gossip. I'm Professor Walker of Whisperology." He speaks enthusiastically of the world of Hollywood gossip non-stop for two hours. "My proudest moment," he volunteers, " was when I revealed that Roseanne and Tom Arnold had tatooed each other's names on their arses. It was, wow! My editor said: `Look Mike, are you sure? Because Roseanne is the sort of woman to pull her pants down to prove you wrong.' But I had two eyewitnesses for that story."Mr Walker has been on the Enquirer for a quarter of a century and his Behind the Screens diary has a readership of 17m. "I have sources everywhere," he says, "at the top of the industry, but also among the hairdressers, the masseuses.. the girls who do the body waxing.

That's a great story - girls bringing their boyfriends to their body waxer That's a `talker'. Like the time I reported that haemorrhoid cream reduces wrinkles. Another `talker'."This, according to the National Enquirer, is the "hard gossip" which readers, and now television audiences, "crave", and it puts in the shade "kissy-butt, soft sofa" British television chit-chat. "Nigel Dempster's job would bore me to death, and my readers," says Mr Walker. "All those country houses."The show will feature Mr Walker doing a fast-paced monologue, interviewing babe reporters in the field, and chairing discussions with other gossip experts The love lives of the rich and famous will feature heavily.