Best Saga in Ages

Not that I'm old enough to subscribe, you understand, but the latest issue of Saga magazine would tempt me to, if only I were honest enough to own up.

Katy bravery, who I still think of as a fresh faced twentysomething back in the day when we both arrived in Fleet Street to launch the Daily Shah, has done a remarkable job in revamping a publication showing no signs of retirement and very few wrinkles.

The last time we met, she told me she was overdosing on celebrities after years of editing mags at the Express, Mirror, NoW etc. Even so, I see she couldn't resist putting Kristin Scott Thomas on the cover. But like all men of an undisclosed age, I'm certainly not complaining about that.

Talking of revamps, I've just returned from another week in my Padstow bolthole where I bought a copy of the Cornish Guardian. Its a paper I knew well long before I met anyone in fleet street; a local rival, in fact (I was on the opposition Courier in Bodmin).

Back then in the seventies, it wasn't much of a rival, it has to be said: parochial, predictable and packed with parish pump, nothing like the clean, confident and crisp version editor Zena O'Rourke is producing today.
And that is presumably why judges last month voted it weekly newspaper of the year. Another victory for another female editor in the days when everyone is closing down and going digital.

Encouraging.