The feral beast: Moving up to civilised hours

The Evening Standard's news editor, Hugh Dougherty, is reportedly moving on to pastures new, but nobody was quite sure where he was destined. He is, indeed, moving upstairs, I can reveal, to the Daily Mail (as has been mooted but not confirmed), but his title and exact position on the desk is still to be arranged. Having joined the Standard seven and a half years ago as a news reporter, and working as news editor since October 2006 – getting up at 4.00am every day – the Mail should be a doddle.

D'Ancona's grammar reveals all

The necessary public pleasantries have been exchanged over the departure of editor Matthew D'Ancona from the Spectator, presumably in the unlikely hope that we should not find out why he's gone. But in Danks's statement there is a clue. He said "the Spectator editorship is a precious trust to be held for a limited period of time and I had always envisaged moving on...". "Had", rather than "have"? It invites the inference "had ... until something went wrong". If he had chosen to go, surely he would have said "have"?

Is this GQ's next cover girl?

Lily Allen's face has been in the papers, a good deal recently, watching cricket and elsewhere. Often she has been photographed with her builder boyfriend, Sam Cooper, but the sharp-eyed will have noticed another, generally unidentified figure beside her. Step forward Alex Bilmes, features director, no less, of GQ magazine. If he's there for a fly-on-the-wall feature, we can't wait to read it.

Final curtain for 'Express' critic

Daily Express theatre critic Simon Edge has been, well, edged out. Edge was sharing duties with veteran Paul Callan but now we hear Callan will be doing the job single-handed. "Simon was a bit pushy," says an Express source. "In theatrical terminology, he has now 'gone dark'."

The wooden brief chips in

Sir Alan Sugar is using one of his TV co-stars for his defamation fight with Daily Mail hack Quentin Letts. Sir Alan is angry that Letts suggested on LBC radio that the Labour peer was thick and that he only got his peerage because he had been on telly. The partner handling the matter at posh City law firm Herbert Smith is Alan Watts, who appeared beside Sir Alan in a recent episode of BBC1's Apprentice. Not everyone was impressed. One review complained that he was "so wooden it was untrue".

When journalism is like a judo bout

Fleet Street oldtimer Mark Law has quit editing the zesty news website The First Post. Law, who set up the online daily magazine in 2005, is off to write about judo. Some journalists who have written for The First Post say that dealing with its accounts department is not unlike being grappled to the floor by an insistent black belt.