18.

The night Princess Diana died in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, the Coleridge family was at an Enid Blyton fancy-dress party in Norfolk, given by the camp cabaret artist Kit Hesketh-Harvey,fn1 my Cambridge contemporary, and his actress wife, Katie.

No sooner had we left the barn where the party was still swinging, with men in shorts dressed as Julian and Dick from the Famous Five, and women in gingham smocks as Anne and Aunt Fanny, than news of the tragedy began filtering through. By morning, it was confirmed, and the world’s television stations had an unquenchable need for ‘talking heads’ to milk every aspect of the unfolding drama.

Each time I switched TV channels, there was another Condé Nast staffer sounding off. There must have been ten on air at any one time. We were fielding experts on Diana’s fashion, her marriage, her family, her sons. A Style Editor from GQ was broadcasting about the Prince of Wales’s suits, a Travel Editor opining on the best suites at the Paris Ritz. It felt desperately undignified.

I sent out a directive there should be no more Vogue House experts speculating about Princess Diana, and it played badly. I soon got a telephone call from Tatler’s Social Editor, Ewa Lewis.

‘Nicholas, this ridiculous fatwa on doing TV interviews, it doesn’t apply to me, does it?’

‘I’m afraid it does, Ewa.’ I explained my thinking.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are creating a big expensive problem for me. I’ve been offered six grand to do a half-hour Japanese TV slot about her, and the same from Korea. And the thing is, I’ve got some very expensive cosmetic dentistry coming up, and twelve grand would come in handy just now.’

‘But you didn’t know Princess Diana would be killed in a car crash when you booked your dentist. So it is hardly my fault.’

‘Yes, but these opportunities don’t come along that often … I’ll be expecting a good pay rise to compensate.’

We spent hours at Vogue House trying to crack the enigma of which front covers sold best. A good cover makes a 15 to 20 per cent difference to sales at news-stand, and you felt there should be a formula, an algorithm, to get it right every time. The people in the circulation department had a stack of old wives’ tales, passed down the generations, on what did and didn’t sell. These included: blonde models outsell brunettes, smiley faces outsell frowns, green covers never sell, models must have direct eye contact with the reader, grey is a bad background colour, red and fluorescent orange are the strongest logo colours … the list went on. Unless the cover had an ultra-bright image of a blonde, grinning Claudia Schiffer staring directly out, with a cherry-red logo (not in any way obscured by the model’s head) then the circulation team was full of foreboding, shaking their heads in dismay.

We held monthly Cover Meetings in my office, with the various Editors displaying their wares to an audience of Creative Directors, Publishers, marketing and circulation geeks. The cover options would be propped up along the sofa, and we would chew over them.

With magazines like House & Garden, The World of Interiors and Condé Nast Traveller, there could be as many as ten choices: farmhouse kitchens, Knightsbridge drawing rooms, riads in Tangiers, Caribbean beaches. The options were infinite.

Circulation, at this point, would make one of two possible observations. They would say, ‘Whenever we feature a four-poster bed on the cover, we see a ten per cent spike.’ Or else, ‘My vote goes for the sandy beach with the palm trees. But can we “push” the blue of the sea a bit? Make it look more turquoise and inviting? And boost the sunshine?’

With Vogue, Tatler, Vanity Fair, Glamour and GQ, all of which rely on celebrity covers or supermodels, the choice was limited: generally only one subject, but several different crops (a close-up face, a full-length shot or an arty blurred version). Once again, everyone at the Cover Meeting conformed to stereotype.

Circulation said, ‘I’m a bit dubious about the choice of personality. I mean, have readers heard of Anne Hathaway? She’s not exactly a household name.’ (Unless the front cover had David Beckham, Kate Moss, Kate Middleton or Daniel Craig on it, Circulation was dubious.)

The Publisher then said, ‘I’m firmly in favour of the full-length shot. It’s got to be. She’s wearing Prada, and they need a cover.’

The Editor then said, ‘All my staff prefer the edgy, arty image. We held an office poll and it was overwhelming.’

Circulation then said, ‘It’s blurred. So we’d need to factor a thirty per cent fall at news-stand.’

The Editor then said, ‘I think I prefer the full-face image myself,’ and so it was chosen. But the fact was, we hardly knew what sold, even after years of practice.

Until Princess Diana died, she was a banker as a cover star, a 25 per cent uplift in sales every time. But celebrities would work for five, six, seven front covers in a row, then suddenly lose their magic, readers became inured. Jennifer Aniston was a banker for five years, until she wasn’t. So was Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz. Catherine Zeta-Jones worked on Glamour. Victoria Beckham was hit and miss (good on a Vogue cover, hot on Glamour, a flop on Tatler). Cheryl Cole had her moment. So did Jennifer Lopez. Naomi Campbell could go either way. Scarlett Johansson was a ‘difficult get’ (months, years spent trying to secure her) but readers didn’t know that and she sold averagely. Salma Hayek and Gwyneth Paltrow disappointed. Kylie Minogue did the business.

Sometimes several of our magazines were stalking the same cover celebrities simultaneously, and that was awkward for me. Alexandra Shulman might say, ‘We’ve got Keira Knightley lined up for August, Nick,’ and I’d know Geordie Greig had her on his July cover of Tatler, and Jo Elvin had her for August Glamour as well. Meanwhile at GQ, Dylan Jones was trying for a semi-naked Keira sprawled across a fur rug for a GQ cover.

As the only person who knew about the impending multiple pile-up of Keiras, I had to box clever. I could ask one magazine to back off, or postpone, but it was complicated. Invariably the smaller magazines had worked longer and harder to secure the celebrity, so felt fiercely entitled to their scoop. But the celebrity’s publicist valued a Vogue cover above all others.

There were other lessons too, painfully learnt. Covers with male celebrities, on a women’s magazine, never sell. No exceptions. Even double-covers – a man and a woman together – seldom perform. We expected a Robbie Williams and Gisele duo on Vogue to fly off the shelves, but it didn’t. Same thing with a brilliant Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley cover (bling Elton in red frock coat, straddled by Hurley with plunging neckline and gleaming white teeth), which we all adored at the Cover Meeting, but which underperformed. Johnny Borrell from Razorlight with Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova did fine, but didn’t soar.

Readers, if asked their opinion, said, ‘Why are all cover models so young? It’s ridiculous. Why not put some older women – role models who have actually achieved something in their lives – on the front cover? I mean, I’m forty-five and I’m your typical reader, and I’d like to see women I can relate to.’

But whenever we tested the theory, they flopped. The covers that actually sold showed skinny, gorgeous, young superstars.

We were launching new magazines at a rate of knots. Condé Nast Traveller, edited by Sarah Miller, later by Melinda Stevens, was a succès d’estime, and sometimes turned a profit too.

The riskier venture was Glamour, launched against Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, which had led the market for decades. Cosmo had been the highest-selling women’s monthly since the 1970s, shifting half a million copies; it felt unassailable. There was something wonderfully audacious about challenging it, and perilous too, a £40 million punt which could easily go disastrously wrong. Condé Nast was on a winning streak, but seen as a bit posh and la-di-da for its own good, and our three big, muscular competitors (Hearst, IPC and EMAP) would have crowed if we fell flat on our faces.

I hired an editor, Jo Elvin, over breakfast in Belgravia at the Halkin hotel. It is a singular art, hiring editors: two-parts gut instinct, one-part analysis of their track record. I had interviewed Vere Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, for my book Paper Tigers and asked him how he chose editors.

He replied, ‘It’s difficult, because you can never be certain until you see the person in action. You see, in this business, people have a sort of literary persona, which is distinct from their everyday persona. It comes through not only in the articles they write themselves, but it comes through into the whole newspaper. This is very important because it’s this charm, and you can’t know whether someone has that ability until they are actually doing the job. Sometimes you’ll find this able and intelligent and charming man, but what he produces is something entirely lacking in charm. So it’s totally unknown, it’s a guess. You have to wait and see.’

Rothermere was right, you can never be sure. But with Jo Elvin, I was pretty certain. I’d seen a dozen candidates, but she got my attention: a feisty Australian, focused and funny, with a quirky wit. She loved the idea of launching Glamour in Britain, she was fearless. She also bought into our secret plan: to launch as a ‘handbag-sized’ magazine and price it at £2 (half the price of Cosmo), which we could afford to do, because the smaller page size meant a saving in paper. Then we would blanket-promote on TV and try and buy our way into the market.

‘All you have to do,’ I told Jo, ‘is produce a sassy, breezy, glamorous, celebrity-powered, widely appealing, non-smutty magazine which will sell in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Hull, London, everywhere.’

‘Okay, boss, no pressure then,’ said Jo. ‘Clear brief.’

We hired away the Publisher of Cosmopolitan, Simon Kippin, who knew the secrets, and assembled a crack team. As the launch date crept nearer, tension mounted. We printed 700,000 copies and booked the first TV slot in every Saturday prime-time ad break. Our game-changing ‘handbag size’ and take-no-prisoners price strategy remained largely a secret. Kate Winslet was the cover star, fresh out of Titanic. Would we hit an iceberg ourselves? we wondered.

On launch day, I toured the supermarkets with Simon Kippin and Jonathan Newhouse, our Chairman, inspecting the displays. We had paid a fortune for in-your-face promotions in every big newsagent and supermarket, and we wanted to see the impact. It was unfortunate that, at our very first stop, Sainsbury’s on the Cromwell Road, not a single copy of Glamour was anywhere to be found, let alone the giant cardboard ‘gondola ends’ and ‘shelf talkers’ we had anticipated.

A gormless retail assistant said, ‘Glamour? I haven’t heard of that one. Is it an “adult magazine” at all? Have you searched on the top shelf?’

‘No, it’s a new young women’s magazine. You may have seen some of our TV ads on Saturday night?’

‘No, sorree …’ She tossed her hair. ‘I do watch the telly, but usually put the kettle on during the adverts.’

Our tour, intended to show the Condé Nast heir our dramatic £10 million promotional campaign, was not going well.

‘Tell you what,’ said the gormless assistant, ‘we do have other women’s titles available. Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire …’

Eventually we discovered several thousand Glamours piled up in the stockroom, and Jonathan and I lugged them to the shelves ourselves.

After this inauspicious start, matters perked up. The first week’s sales figures were so impossibly strong, we disbelieved them. The second week’s figures were even stronger. We felt like a political party on Election Night when an exit poll forecasts an unanticipated 200-seat overall majority: too good to be real. Each evening, from across the country, fresh dispatches came through: Glamour is outselling Cosmopolitan two-to-one in Coventry, Canterbury, Reading, Sheffield, Farnborough. Glamour is outselling Marie Claire four-to-one in Exeter, Gloucester, Middlesbrough, Stoke-on-Trent and across the East Midlands. We knew we were winning when the Cosmo team moved into panic rebuttal mode, accusing Glamour of being a ‘pygmy’ magazine of little appeal.

When the first set of official six-month circulation figures was released, Glamour had come from nowhere to become the best-selling women’s monthly in Britain. After a year, it became the best-selling in Europe, with an audited sale of 680,000 copies. There was something very sweet, for a luxury publishing house like Condé Nast, to have invented and launched the mid-market leader. Jo Elvin deservedly scooped every Editor’s prize going, and Simon Kippin won every Publisher’s prize. It was, as they say, a good gig.

Morale at Vogue House had hit a high. It felt like a golden place in which to work, in these years of plenty at the start of the new millennium. I think it is unusual, in any workplace, to find oneself part of a group which, irrespective of work, would be your friends. But so it was, and I was blessed.

I recently found an old photograph of the British team, the fifty or so key Editors, Publishers and executives lined up like a school group, some sitting cross-legged on the floor at the front. Alexandra, Dylan, Jo, Sue, Geordie, Sarah Miller, Rupert Thomas of The World of Interiors. There, too, are Peter Stuart, Publisher of GQ, Helen Fifield, Publisher of House & Garden, Emma Redmayne, Publisher of Interiors, Jamie Bill, Publisher of Condé Nast Traveller, Claire German, Publisher of Brides, Kate Slesinger of Vogue, Patricia Stevenson of Tatler, Simon Leadsford of House & Garden. And people like our Marketing whizz, Jean Faulkner, Nicky Eaton of Press and PR, Sarah Jenson, Production Director, Sue Douglas, Customer Publishing for clients.

All ten of our British magazines were climbing in sales and advertising, and we were working on three more launches at least. Staff numbers grew from 250 to 925 in London; profits hit new highs. And it was fun. My friend Annie Holcroft, the Vanity Fair Publisher, was the company prankster. Somehow, she had got hold of a rubber stamp of my signature.

The first indication was a memo to All Staff, ostensibly coming from me. It read: ‘For economy reasons to save on electricity, staff are no longer permitted to use the lifts unless there are a minimum of five passengers wishing to go up or down. Please form a queue in the lobby, or on your respective floors, until five or more staff members have assembled. At this point, you may press the button to summon a lift.’

Embarrassingly, at least thirty staff believed it.

Following a London visit by Si Newhouse, Annie faked another memo. This time, Stephen Quinn, the Vogue Publisher, was the object of the spoof. It read: ‘Following the recent visit from our New York proprietor, S. I. Newhouse Jr, it has been decided to rename Vogue House as Tatler House. This is for legal and tax reasons, enabling a write-off of accumulated investment and goodwill in the Tatler brand against the purchase price of the building. Please ensure all writing paper, business cards, invoices etc. are updated accordingly.’

The first I knew about it was Stephen bursting into my office, eyes blazing. ‘Have you completely forgotten that Vogue makes half the damned profit of this entire company? It would be humiliating for Vogue to work in Tatler House …’

I stared at him. ‘I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.’

He sighed and looked thoughtful. Then said, ‘Annie Holcroft, curse her.’

I had now been Managing Director of Condé Nast in Britain for ten years, and Jonathan Newhouse and his wife Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, the Creative Director, gave a big party to celebrate in the Ballroom at Claridge’s. I don’t suppose any of us realized I was only at the one-third mark of my eventual time at Condé Nast. Looking back at the party photographs, we all seem absurdly young, which indeed we were – between the 200 guests, we were 4,000 years younger than we are today: Maurice Saatchi, Tony Snowdon, Terence Conran, Martin Sorrell, Joan Collins and Vivienne Westwood, Mario Testino and John Galliano, Isabella Blow, John Morgan, Nigella Lawson, Nicky Haslam … There is something almost macabre about the photographs, knowing now what we couldn’t have predicted: the sadnesses and early deaths, scandals and divorces that lay ahead for so many (but not all).

Si Newhouse was still making annual inspections of the European company. Even Jonathan prepared carefully for these visits, which were seen as something to ‘get through’ without tripping up, or triggering unsolicited advice on how to run our business. But they were interesting; away from Manhattan, ensconced in the Connaught, Si was habitually indiscreet on the subject of magazines he was stalking to purchase (Hearst was generally the competitor) and Editors-in-Chief he hoped to lure or intended to fire. Often he bought his fiercely intellectual wife, Victoria, with him, and sometimes his daughter Pam and her husband.

Georgia asked the younger Newhouses over dinner at the Connaught, ‘Do you read a lot of the Condé Nast magazines yourself?’

‘We don’t take any of them,’ Pam replied. ‘We don’t approve of them. They are too materialistic and showy.’

‘What about House & Garden? That’s pretty inoffensive.’

‘That one is the worst.’

Si liked to eat early at 7 p.m. Each restaurant we went to, he asked, ‘Er, Nicholas, it doesn’t seem to be very full here. Is it no longer fashionable?’ He looked crestfallen.

‘Don’t worry, this is still quite early for London. It’ll fill up later.’ Which it did, but there was always an anxious period of just us in a deserted, echoing dining room.

Each morning, I received stacks of post from readers, favour-requests and complaints. These fell into three categories.

The first were letters begging for work experience, several of these a day. They would begin, ‘Dear Mr Coleridge. You don’t know me from Adam, but I met your godmother at a dinner party in Wiltshire and she said you wouldn’t mind me writing. My daughter, Annabel, is fourteen and a pupil at St Mary’s, Calne. She is passionate about English (she is forecast an A grade at GCSE) and art. She would love to do a month’s work experience in July (we fly to Corfu on the 26th). Please don’t feel you have to reply, you must be so busy, I won’t be the least bit offended.’

The second lot were letters from mad people, often complaining about Tatler employing Tom and Emma Parker Bowles as food and motoring correspondents. They had it in for Camilla and sent poison-pen letters in biro and block capitals, heavily underscored. Sometimes (bizarrely) they put their addresses at the top, and we would Google Street View them – finding a neglected bungalow on an edge-of-town Hartlepool road.

The third lot came from rich, grand widows in Cadogan Square. They wrote, ‘I was most upset to find a “special offer” for a House & Garden subscription, offering the magazine for £21 for twelve issues. I have been a loyal subscriber for thirty years, and my most recent renewal price was £24.50. Why am I being penalized for my loyalty? I await your explanation with interest.’

The richer people are, the more ready to complain. At dinners, I became used to the wives of millionaires declaring, ‘I can’t believe Vogue costs four pounds. Four pounds! And it is full of advertising! Ridiculously overpriced.’

I replied, ‘Four pounds is what it costs to dry-clean one leg of a pair of chinos.’

‘Well, that is perfectly ridiculous too. I grant you that.’

My Number One hero, David Bowie, was on tour at Wembley Arena, and I took three other diehard Bowie fans: Alexandra Shulman, Dylan Jones and Vogue Creative Director, Robin Derrick. We were driven to the venue by Brian Greenaway.

On the way, Dylan announced, ‘I’ve organized for us to go backstage after the show to meet Bowie.’

Alexandra and I were full of misgivings. We felt anxious about meeting our hero, in case it broke the spell.

The show was brilliant, he played all the classic tracks. As the audience filed out, we walked down half a mile of concrete backstage corridors and arrived outside the star’s dressing room.

Only one other person was waiting to be introduced. It was Charles Kennedy, chubby-faced Leader of the Liberal Democrats. He had flown down from his Scottish constituency for the concert, straight from judging an agricultural show. He wore a hairy three-piece tweed suit.

The door to the dressing room opened and we formed a greeting line, like at a royal reception. Bowie was pin-thin. He approached down the line.

‘And this is Nicholas Coleridge,’ he was told.

‘Not the same Nicholas Coleridge who writes books?’ he said. ‘Iman and I really enjoyed your last three novels.’

Your last three novels

It was the crowning moment of my life. I was unable to speak. I grinned inanely.

All the way home in the car, Alex and Dylan confirmed, ‘He really did say it, Nick. It isn’t a dream.’

I made a point of meeting would-be journalists because you never knew when you’d strike gold. One day, my old friend Edward Stourton rang me. He said, ‘Nick, I know this is a pain, but could you possibly see an ex-girlfriend of my son? She wants to write. I’d be so grateful if you could. She stayed with us in Greece this summer, and swam stark naked in the pool every day. I was trying to read my book, and she paraded up and down in the nude.’

‘Happy to help,’ I said. ‘Ideally, can she come to my office at eight thirty a.m.? The diary’s pretty full at the moment, it would be easier if she could arrive early.’

Not long afterwards, the young female writer appeared. From first impressions, I marked her down as a Vogue or Tatler sort of girl.

We talked about journalism, and I asked, ‘Which of our titles are you most interested in contributing to?’

GQ,’ she replied, not missing a beat. ‘I want to be your sex columnist.’

‘And, er, are you a particular expert?’

‘Yes, I’ve had a lot of experience – and not just vanilla sex. In fact, I find I can’t come properly unless I’m tied up in Lycra rope.’

It was 8.40 a.m., I was holding a cup of coffee. The cup started to rattle in the saucer, coffee slopping over the rim.

‘Let me ring Dylan Jones,’ I said. ‘He’s the Editor. He tends to get in early. I think you two should meet at once.’

Two hours later, Dylan rang me. ‘God,’ he said, ‘if you get any more like that, send them straight down. Unbelievable. I’ve no idea if she can write or not, but I’ve commissioned three pieces.’

She remained GQ’s red-hot sex columnist for the next four years, until she married and felt obliged to resign.