The media column: 'It makes the other Sunday tabloids look pompous'

News from another cultural galaxy. Sunday saw the launch of the Daily Star Sunday. This is new in the sense that it really is a daily newspaper on Sunday, and not a Sunday newspaper. But who and what is it for? There are already three UK Sunday tabloids, so where is the gap in the market? Why would anyone prefer "The News, The Goss, The Pics, The Sport" that the Star offers?

Well, compared with the new paper, the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror and The People do look rather fusty and pompous, what with their big-name star columnists and their editorials calling for the Government to lock up all paedophiles. The Star does not call upon the Government to do anything, because the Government is not a TV soap-opera or a football team.

Nor is there any tedious sense of permanence to the Star. Like a set on TV, the whole thing could be struck in five minutes, and a completely different (though equally flimsy) edifice built.

There are no scoops. Pages two and three tell how Geri Halliwell is distracting male contestants for the new ITV Popstars: The Rivals series (on which she's a judge) by dressing sexily. With pictures. Pages four and five have fashion snaps of the hole-in-the-nose victim Danniella Westbrook, as she stands ready to make a comeback, complete with a new sharkskin septum.

That's pretty much it for hard news, however. The rest is gossip columns, agony aunts, gossip aunts and agony columns. The writing career of "Helen Chamberlain, the TV soccer girl with loads of balls!" is launched with the words: "So here I am, then, this is it and this is me." Helen gives us her list of 10 "footballers with names that deserve a red card", from a Danny Shittu (who must be reeling from such an unexpected bit of name-calling), to a Daniel Gay.

Over on the Bitches' "goss" pages (there are four bitches, all with the same haircut), you can look at minor celebrities emerging from nightclubs, and work out what to do with the information that Graham Norton has been spotted, "buying a sandwich at EAT on the South Bank". Pages 18 and 19 are taken up by "Hot: number one showbiz page in the universe" (ah, but which planet?).

But best of all – better, even, than Soaper Stars (sic), two pages specifically about forthcoming soap events, better than features on stars and their hats and on how gay celebrities (Norton, again) are to engage in a charity boxing-match – is the agony page. Here, Jane O'Gorman "solves your problems today and every day".

All problem pages tell you something about what the paper thinks of its readers. Our own Virginia Ironside ("My husband, a professor of microbiology, has just been told that he has six months to live. Should I stop seeing my lesbian lover until after his death, or would that be dishonest?") certainly has her elegant finger on our racing pulses. So, Jane has to deal with the Star man who writes: "I love older women... And I mean OLDER women. I'm 25 and my current girlfriend is 69..." (Oh yeah? Ed.) But she lives in the USA, so the two of them are confined to phone sex, etc, etc.

Then there's the conscience-stricken woman who begins: "I got off with my best friend's boyfriend and gave him oral sex in the street..." Jane advises this charitable fellatio-donor with the words: "I think the best thing is to keep your mouth shut." The words stable-door, horse and bolted spring to mind here.

From all this, we can guess that the target audience of the Daily Star Sunday is younger than the newspaper average, watches a huge amount of TV, has a fairly basic sense of humour and is prone to sudden sexual lapses while walking home from the pub. And thus, for a while, will not worry about the fact that the Star, with its mélange of left-overs from photo-shoots and PR mailshots, has managed an almost incredible feat: it actually markets a freesheet that costs 35p to buy.

david.aaronovitch@btinternet.com