The weekly magazine wishes to reposition itself in our minds as a (no, of course not a more cerebral title) fashion and lifestyle title, and to position itself in newsagents far, far away from OK, Now and the other, lesser rivals. Celebrity magazines have been bankers for publishers for years, and the appetite for highlighted soap stars and buff reality-show characters has been relentless amongst a certain constituency. The rest of us just looked in occasionally, aghast. Who could forget the extraordinary coverage of Paul Gascoigne's wedding reception, the groom pictured at the urinal, a pint in one hand and oh, never mind…

Hello might have decided that paying up to six figures for cheesy pictures of C-list celebs in rented apartments is no longer a great investment. Are they aware that fashion and lifestyle (whatever that actually is) coverage is no cheaper?

What's more likely is that Hello's publisher acknowledges that, like crystal meth addicts, WAG addicts need a stronger and stronger hit each time. Why wait a week for some anodyne photos and an insipid Q&A when every day on websites like TMZ (you'll remember that it broke the Prince Harry story) one can get instant, high-octane - if unpolished – juice on famous folk?

But Grazia, the magazine that Hello wishes to now nuzzle up against, with its mix of smart fashion coverage and a better class of celebrity gossip, has been caught on the hop a few times recently with splashy stories that turned out to be the exact opposite of reality. The wrong Katy getting divorced; Jennifer Aniston's old maid status rubber-stamped in the very week she gets engaged. For those that care about who's boffing who, accuracy matters just as much as who's been reshuffled matters to the rest of us.

Famously, the curse of Hello was that couples snapped in marital bliss for the magazine were doomed to divorce soon after. Will its new direction be a curse for Hello? As a consumer of high-minded newsprint and trashy websites (although I commend to you Jezebel.com for a better class of gossip), I won't be searching it out in whichever shelf of the newsagents it ends up on.

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