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September 13, 2007

Sunday Telegraph loses its Patience (haven’t we heard that one before?)

By Axegrinder axeblog

So farewell then to Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft, who only lasted 18 months at the helm. I’m sure she’ll be snapped up soon.

My mole at Telegraph Plaza in Victoria says: “Apparently she was smart enough to get a clause in her contract saying she had to be treated decently.”

However, for all those who have sat in the Sunday Telegraph editor’s chair, spare a thought for Simon Heffer, columnist and associate editor, who has been left in the cold.

For Axegrinder hears that the red-haired one, when he left the Daily Mail, was led to believe he would have editorship of one of the Telegraph titles.

Heffer’s wife, I’m reliably informed, told him long ago not to pin his hopes on being an editor. After being passed over before now, maybe now he’ll give it a rest.

As one in the know says: “He’s a grammar boy who goes around pretending he is an old-Etonian.”

No wonder then that Will Lewis, editor-in-chief, isn’t so thrilled with having Heffer at his heels, as he’s trying to make the Telegraph look and sound more “normal”.

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Talking about Lewis, word has come my way that before he left The Sunday Times for the Telegraph ‒ where he has had a meteoric rise ‒ he fancied Patience Wheatcroft’s job as City editor at The Times.

In any event, with Patience gone, it recently fell to Lewis to extol the virtues of blogs and podcasts to Sunday Telegraph staff.

“During new editor Ian MacGregor’s first pep talk to staff,” says one, “it was Will who did the talking, Ian the listening”.

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