“It’s a cultural landmark, but as readers drift away, is there room for more than one celebrity on Paul’s Daily Mail?”There’s much for the professional journalist to admire in the Daily Mail, and much for the professional human being to despise. Michael Leapman‘s snide piece on page 15, laying into Kirsty Young falls squarely into the despise category. It’s a page of curmudgeonly ‘advice,’ which would still be offensive if offered publicly by someone who actually knew about broadcasting. Leapman quotes no-one – the nearest he gets to attribution is “some of us Sassenachs” who apparently find that Scottish accents fail “to warm the cockles of our hearts.” He tells us, amusingly, that he doesn’t want to fall foul of the “Race Relations Act.” Funny guy.

Young doesn’t need former colleagues like me springing unprompted to her defence, but the piece is everything that’s sad and out-of-date about the Mail. Just to remind ourselves how out-of-date, take a look at these nuggets from a Mail profile of Sue Lawley in the early 90s:

She is bright but not frighteningly intelligent (a girl with a third-class degree from Bristol University is not quite a blue stocking).

Quite a few celebrities who have pulled themselves up in society develop profound amnesia about their early life, and to say the least Miss Lawley has never traded on her origins.

Once upon a time, Sue had said sniffily: ‘Only actresses have agents’, but by the time she came to move on from newscasting she had signed up with Billy Cotton, former managing director of the BBC and now the hottest of agents.

With his help she secured a three-year, £500,000 contract at the BBC. And it was now, the whisperers say, that she began to come a little unstuck.

Those wretched whisperers! That was a nasty piece of work from a long time ago. Swapping Young for Lawley doesn’t make it any better. I doubt either woman will have lost much sleep over those pieces, but that’s not much of an excuse either.

Since 2001, when it peaked at 2.4m, the Daily Mail‘s circulation has been gently declining – will Michael Leapman be offering some avuncular advice to Paul Dacre? Surely the Mail‘s longterm devotees or the whisperers would have something to say? Whether he cares for it or not, Dacre has a great deal of respect in the wide world of journalism – pieces like this make you question on what basis that respect was gained, and that’s a shame.