Tittle tattle...

There's nothing like a Media Guardian interview to get the industry buzzing. It's the sign your appointment is taken seriously enough by the powers that be in the media that they'll send a journo down to nose around your office and take you, well, not very seriously at all. Introducing Catherine Ostler's 'It's a bit posh. OK, it's very posh' summation of her five days in charge at Tatler. Yes, I said five days. Because despite being appointed Editor In Chief of the socialite's bible over six weeks ago - over a quick breakfast with Nicholas (that's Conde Nast's MD Coleridge to you and me) - she's barely had time to be in the office. There's been the scrum of Paris Fashion Week to attend and a serious dollop of digging up the dirt on what Tatler's former Editor In Chief Geordie Greig is up to at her former Evening Standard offices - a worrying obsession, I feel. So preoccupied is she with the Russian intervention at Associated Newspapers, she's commissioning her first Tatler feature on how new owner Alexander Lebedev made his money and how his 20-something son Evgeny is ripping up the capital. [Note to self here: must make effort to track down potential billionaire whose daddy could give me a job at Raffles, some time.] 'It's all about shifting the mix and cast of characters to reflect the changing nature,' Ostler explains, before quickly realising she's made an error that inadvertently shows how wrapped up in the past she is. 'I keep saying London but 40% of readers are outside the capital.' Yes, Editor In Chief - most Tatler readers reside in the countryside. In big piles of bricks, or the hovels that surround them, where nowadays there's less shooting and more shooting up at the infamous after parties. 

If I sound bitter about Ostler's appointment, let me clarify. I have nothing against her personally. Never met her in fact. But she managed to make ES Magazine - the weekly glossy that should capture the amazingly diverse and cheeky irreverence of London - staid and irrelevant to all those who lived outside SW1.  And I worry she'll do the same to Tatler, a magazine that in the last eight months has pushed itself into my must-read pile of monthlies. (Yes, yes, perhaps not that hard). It's managed to recognise the shifting nature of 'high society' - where Sloanes go to boxing matches, Royals fall out of nightclubs and Pixie Geldof's a cover star - without loosing any of it's cache within that set. The features team especially, Ticky Headley Dent and Richard Dennan, are spot on at spotting a trend (from K&C, mixing Ketamin with Coke, to the rise of the after party) and expertly bringing it to life to make it accessible and amusing to those both living it and on the periphery wanting to look in. Surely that's the key to a successful Tatler? Let's hope Ostler realises that.