We’re trying to maintain our competitive edge.”Fifteen million-plus Stateside readers will be glad to hear it, as will fans, aficionados and addicts in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and dear old Blighty. And why do Hollywood stars compel their employees to make their mark on such documents? Because of the Enquirer, of course. As the Mail accurately, if hypocritically, sniffed, “Some now take such jobs for that reason alone.” Nice work if you can get it.The executive editor Steve Coz, however, is as mad as hell and he ain’t gonna take it any more. “We’re sick and tired of the media ripping off our advance stories.

The same Enquirer, as the Daily Mail pointed out, that put 20 hacks to work investigating Michael Jackson, turning over not unwilling bodyguards, cleaners and cooks, and which runs a permanent advertisement in the Hollywood press inviting the servants of celebrities to break the confidentiality agreements their bosses have made them sign, and flog their torrid tales for a juicy profit. Take the premature leak of our recent exclusive, `Grace Under Fire Scandal: Brett Butler’s Bizarre Sexual Antics With TV Kid.’ It’s absurd. And yes, the Enquirer was first to trumpet the late crooner’s galloping cancer, and his six-pack with Valium habit, and do a lip smacking lay-out of the “brave but ravaged star”.
Isn’t this the same Enquirer where showbiz columnist Mike Walker routinely, gleefully, discloses the top secret plots of every hit soap and sitcom? “On next season’s final episode, Roseanne will take her character full circle when she hauls her family to a comedy club. There she’ll shock ‘em with the news she’s secretly been moonlighting as a stand-up comic!” The Mike Walker who invites the masses to e-mail him with hot tips, just as the editorial masthead pimps for spicy revelations (“We’ve got $500 for you … A gagging clause at the Enquirer, home of the brutal expose, promiscuous exclamation mark and permanently shocked prose – it’s like Dean Martin telling you, most sincerely folks, to lay off the sauce.

The sort of punitive damages – $150,000 – that the Enquirer had to pay Clint Eastwood last year after publishing a bogus interview in which the Man With No Name allegedly demeaned the fairer sex and boasted about his legendary capacity for hard liquor, not to mention the $400,000 out of court settlement the then Roseanne Arnold received for the theft of love letters to her husband Tom. Mr Clarke has said he would not “slash and burn” to achieve tax cuts, and he has emphasised he is determined to follow a “sensible approach”.. Anyone for irony? On the eve of its 25th birthday, the National Enquirer – America’s best-selling paper, the world’s most-read tabloid weekly, the publication that printed pictures of the OJ prosecutor Marcia Clark topless, blithely ran “candids” of Elvis Presley and River Phoenix in their coffins, unearthed Nicole Simpson’s diary (“OJ beat the holy hell out of me and we lied at the X-ray lab”), featured model Donna Rice sat on the lap of then presidential hopeful Gary Hart, and were the first to transcribe the Squidgy tapes – that same National Enquirer demanded that staffers sign a confidentiality agreement barring them from disclosing the tiniest titbit, the merest rumour, the flimsiest gossip to any other branch of the press: a ban that continues for five years after they leave the Florida-based operation, under threat of “punitive damages”. William Waldegrave, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, confirmed the Budget estimate that total taxes and national insurance contributions had risen as a percentage of gross domestic product from 35.5 per cent in 1979-80 to 36 per cent in 1995-6.The Tory right-wing intends to warn Mr Clarke that unless he is prepared to find the room for substantial tax cuts, the Tories’ election chances will be dashed.Tax cuts will mean substantial reductions in public expenditure, which could also prove unpopular. Despite accident-free trading since 1923, garage owner Hedley Wilding has been told by Hereford and Worcester Fire Brigade that, under new rules, it will not renew his petrol licence as the pumps are too close to the road.