Heat Magazine has jumped the shark (Heat Magazine)

Member Name: kerrypanda

Product:	Heat Magazine
Date:	19/05/09 (109 review reads)
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I bought the first ever copy of heat magazine back in Feb 1999 and I'm ashamed to say it turned me into an instant celebrity gossip addict.

Back then the celebs came to heat. They could get anyone they wanted, in fact some celebs seemed to enjoy playing up to them. I still remember the extensive coverage of the Beckhams' wedding, the Gone with the Wind-style poses in their reception outfits, baby Brooklyn looking bewildered at all the fuss in his little purple cowboy hat (to match Victorias' purple dress. He had a different colour at the ceremony to match the wedding gown. Of course.) The writing style was fantastically bitchy, but it was fun as well. Even the tv listings used to be laugh out loud funny.

When I buy heat now, its only out of longstanding habit. The magazine seems to have lost its identity almost entirely. Thanks to our celeb-obsessed media there are lots of other weekly gossip mags to choose from, including Now, Star, Look, New, OK!, Hello, Grazia, some of which have borrowed heavily from heat's original ideas.

Almost every week the magazine tries a new format to see if it will spark the readers interest. There was a tv ad announcing a new weekly supplement of internet gossip, and "where are they now"s, which appears sporadically, including a wedding version this week; they have tried putting the focus on male celebs, currently they seem to be trying the fashiony route a la Look and Grazia. And heat really doesn't draw in the big names anymore, its almost entirely ex-reality show contestants and soapstars these days.

There are two things I find particularly distasteful about modern heat - the main one is the relentless weight stories. For instance, one week heat had a photo of Lily Allen on a beach leaning forward, "look she's put on weight, how awful for her!" Later in the mag, shot obviously from the same day, she was lying back and you could see her ribs, "look shes lost too much weight! Why?" Someone reading heat 200 years in the future would think that this decades' female celebs spent most of their time veering dangerously between obesity and anorexia. Laughably, last weeks issue showed various celebs, mostly mums, on beach holidays in bikinis looking less than toned. Heat saw fit to put them on the front page for people to gawp over, and it carried the truly hypocritical headline "We've put on weight, so what!" If it is such a "so what" issue, why make it the cover story??

The other problem is that a lot of heats' stories now are pure fiction. Whenever there is a big story, for example, Ashley Cole allegedly cheating on Cheryl, it is quite suspicious how each different gossip mag has a different angle. Each cover announces it has the exclusive true story, he did cheat on her/he didn't, she's left/she's staying, her bandmates are keeping out of it/they hate Ashley, she's not sleeping with him/they're having a baby. It seems like the editors have a quick conference call, share the stories out, and then just make them on the spot. Very often now, on heats' Letters page there is a tiny yellow box containing an apology to (whoever) for printing lies about them.

Heats' longtime editor, Mark Frith, was credited with the mags great success, and he retired at the start of 2008. Its a chicken and egg situation; is it worse because he left, or did he leave because he knew the mag was going downhill? The incident of November 2007 may have forced his hand when heat included in its mag a sticker of Jordans' disabled son Harvey with the caption "Harveys going to eat me!" This was described by a writer at The Times as "the lowest point in British journalism."

The last time I bought heat mag a few weeks ago the price was £1.65, about 110 pages, and the quality of the paper itself is awful, it used to be thick paper, now its the peel-it-apart-carefully kind. I am more likely to look at their online gossip site "heatworld" nowadays. At least its free!

Perhaps now, especially now, people are losing patience with disposable celebs whose sole occupation appears to be getting paid thousands to witter away about their favourite lipgloss, and which blokes from Emmerdale they have shagged. I have the feeling the grande-dame of celebrity gossip mags could well be the first to fall, and maybe its about time.

Summary: Lost its celebrity sparkle