Will Angry of Tunbridge Wells forgive the Telegraph?

Like the Tory Party, its staunchest media supporter is modernising. But will it have equal difficulty in carrying its diehard supporters with it?

But while it is common wisdom in the Conservative, and Labour, parties that nothing need stand in the way of modernising - because rank-and-file members have nowhere else to go - it has still to be seen if similar laws apply to newspapers.

More than any other title, the Telegraph has been grappling with how to acquire young readers without alienating its ageing, hard-core audience - the Herbert Gussets and Bufton Tuftons popularised by Private Eye.

Previous Telegraph editors have famously moved carefully when attempting to spruce up the newspaper of the shires. According to Don Berry, a former executive editor, Telegraph readers can react with unexpected vehemence to the tiniest of alterations to their daily routine.

"When Max and I moved in and started playing around with things, we decided to move the crossword from the bottom left- hand corner of the paper to the bottom right. There was immediate uproar and hundreds of letters poured in, some with diagrams, claiming that we had ruined their day. Apparently, there was a system in which readers would fold the paper into quarters and rest their hand so as not to obscure the clues. We pretty smartly moved the crossword back."

So last week's rejuvenation was appropriately subtle. There was a tabloid sports section, a redesigned business section, and a features section positioned back behind the obituaries, in a way which may have confused some readers. The revival of Marks & Spencer - a Telegraph brand if ever there was one - was trumpeted with pages of fashion. Much reliance is being placed on dramatic pictures - a huge cut-out of a ferret dressed in Burberry, enormous pictures of the fashion editor Hilary Alexander, and an amusing shot of Charles Clarke with the sexy Danish justice minister.

Young, fit and keen on his "man of the people" non-Oxbridge credentials, editor Martin Newland says the relaunch represents only a quarter of his plans. He is now undertaking intensive market research, and planning a revamp of the Saturday paper. Specifically he wants to turn Telegraph readers into "Telegraph people", by extending the brand to other business ventures like websites and bolt-on acquisitions.

"We want to put our brand, and the trust it represents, over a whole range of new activities. Our brand communicates a lot. It's like buying a hat with National Trust on it, rather than Nike. We're John Lewis rather than Topshop."

But do people want to be stereotyped by the paper they read? The Daily Telegraph in particular, rescued from near-collapse in the 1980s, has long been at odds with its own image. When Hastings arrived as editor in the 1980s, he used to tell an anecdote of seeing an elderly couple in sheepskin jackets on a train and realising with sudden dismay that these were his readers. He joked that he wanted them stuffed and placed in the entrance hall, so that his bright young metropolitan staff typescould remind themselves daily of the reality of the readership.

Trevor Grove, a former company executive and editor of the Sunday paper, says: "Extending the brand so that you're called a Telegraph person could be pretty dangerous because you might look around and see all the other fuddy-duddy old people who are being called the same, and feel forced into some club with them."

Unlike Hastings, Newland believes he personally embodies the kind of reader the Telegraph wants. "It's the 30- to 45- year-old who's got married, moved from tight-arsed left to pragmatic right, who like me is still fascinated by sport and reads Stephen King when no one's looking - and wants honest answers to the reality they find themselves in."

Critical in forming his editorial ethos was time spent abroad: "I got off the plane after five years on a Canadian paper with a wonderful North American quality of life, became editor of The Daily Telegraph and suddenly found my quality of life had halved. If Britain was something you bought in a shop, you'd have returned it years ago. We stand for people looking for value in their lives - the suburban, sitting tax ducks, who pay the bills for this country."

Others, however, claim the changes risk damaging something more indefinable about the paper's identity.

"All newspapers have a soul but the Telegraph does more than most," says Stephen Glover, a former Telegraph journalist and media commentator. "A paper's character exists in spite of editors and proprietors who come and go - it's to do with a political outlook, prejudices and personality. But Telegraph readers are dying out slowly and every day they take a bit of Britain with them, so the paper is between a rock and a hard place."

Curiously, the relaunch came as a surprise to some of the paper's own journalists. "No one's mentioned anything about a relaunch to us," grumbled one staffer, "but then we never get told anything any more."

To some, this is proof that upheaval is coming from two directions at once - Newland himself and also group chief executive Murdoch MacLennan, formerly of Associated Newspapers, who is seen by some staff as importing a Daily Mail agenda. MacLennan has been integral in hiring new columnists, such as Simon Heffer and Roy Green- slade, for six-figure salaries previously unknown at the paper.

Greenslade, a long-time Guardian media commentator, New Labour supporter and former Mirror editor, whose line on Northern Ireland has always been pro-Republican, is particularly seen as at odds with the Telegraph's constituency.

"I think they've buggered it," complains one ex-staffer. "The Telegraph's identity has been eroded. The biggest mistake is to try to move to the Daily Mail agenda with its bastardised news features. The Telegraph has always been known for news, but now it's being treated terribly badly."

Newland, however, claims splashier headlines and eye-catching pages are the way ahead: "Prospective readers have less time now to be grabbed." And, bullishly, he pledges to stop short of following the rest of the broad-sheets in going tabloid.

"We don't have to be dramatically different. It's become fashionable to talk of us as if we're the leper of Fleet Street, but in fact we're the market leader. We have two million ABC1 readers and we make huge amounts of money. We just have to safeguard that commercial base."

MEDIA DIARY

Sands makes waves

More waves at The Sunday Telegraph, where a relaunch is due on 6 November. The "something lovely" that editor Sarah Sands is promising will include two new magazines - Grace, a style magazine, and a culture mag called Seven. The masthead is to change (the colour "blue" has been mentioned), and will feature an icon of Canary Wharf between the words "Sunday" and "Telegraph". The latest plan is for one big news story on the front, plus a handful of short "nibs" on the day's news along the bottom. Needless to say, this continues to be just a touch too fluffy for the paper's old guard.

Four on all fours

Shameless plugs department: four Tory MPs have put down an early day motion in the Commons lamenting the reduction in the number of copies available to MPs of London's Evening Standard. They call upon the House authorities to "ensure newspaper racks around the parliamentary estate are well stocked with copies of the Evening Standard", adding quite unnecessarily, "the nation's premier evening newspaper". Don't expect to read too many searing exposés in the Standard of Messrs Greg Hands, Peter Bottomley, Mike Penning and Bob Spink.

Loud inquirer

The choice of John Sweeney as winner of the first Paul Foot award for investigative journalism last week was unanimously endorsed by the judges, although not by everybody. Sweeney uncovered the wrongful imprisonment of three women convicted of "shaken baby syndrome" and exposed the chief prosecution witness in the cases, the paediatrician Sir Roy Meadow. "Paul would have thoroughly approved, not least because it involved innocent people being released from prison," says Richard Ingrams, author of a book about Foot. But another Foot friend thinks Foot might have had mixed feelings about the choice. Francis Wheen says: "I don't remember Footy saying anything unfavourable about Sweeney, but some people do find him a bit noisy."

Happy Harold

Nobel prizewinner Harold Pinter, mercifully still with us after a spell of ill health, is a man of many qualities, but rarely a tolerance of lowly journalists. Ascribe approached him one Christmas Eve and, by way of making conversation, asked him if he was expecting to have a jolly Christmas. Pinter shouted back: "I'm going to have a fucking awful Christmas! I've got fucking cancer!"

Hello again, Simon

Simon Heffer's imminent arrival at The Daily Telegraph will present a diplomatic challenge to former Tory spin doctor Guy Black, now the Telegraph Group's head of PR. Not only is Black likely to find Heffer's anti-gay beliefs hard to swallow, there is also the matter of Mark Bolland, the one-time aide to Prince Charles whohappens to be Black's partner. Heffer consistently criticised Bolland in his courtier days, nicknaming him "Lip Gloss". Heffer's criticisms are felt to have led to Bolland parting company with Clarence House. Is it now possible for he and Bolland's boyfriend to get along as trusting colleagues?