Jackie O’s son is often away from New York on George business and Carolyn Bessette usually stays behind, where she can read about his exploits in the gossip columns as he chaperones to magazine functions the beautiful women who grace its cover. Their relationship is also apparently beset by his increasing petulance following criticism of George.Last year he tried to pull a photographer through the window of his truck. A few days before, a political pundit had described George as boring on national television, causing its editor to send a schoolboyish reply.”I was crushed to hear we here at George have been guilty of boring you,” Kennedy wrote to Morton Kondracke, who is an editor at rival magazine Roll Call “But I don’t feel too remorseful. Roll Call and a warm glass of milk does wonders for my insomnia.”So far George’s results are mixed The first two editions had 170 advertising pages. The latest issues average 75 but to give Kennedy credit, he has built the magazine’s circulation to 400,000 from an initial 250,000 and Hachette now say they expect George will be profitable in four years rather than five as first planned. With these numbers JFK Jr claims he has the largest circulation political magazine in the US.Others are not so sure.”You could call it the smallest circulation entertainment magazine,” says Lawrence White at New York University “That’s why it might fail, because its niche is ill-defined.

To me, it seems a magazine for anthropologists intrigued by public affairs. There is a sense of detachment, even distance, from its subject and a disinclination to get serious, even for a moment”.. I’d always enjoyed writing at school, and developed an interest in reading newspapers when I was quite young. When I went to Sussex University in the late Sixties, I naturally gravitated towards the student newspaper and eventually had my own page. I very nearly became an advertising copywriter, though – I went for an interview with J Walter Thompson – but in the end I decided journalism was more for me. I joined IPC Magazines, and my first job was as a sub-editor on Homes and Gardens. I had a year there, and then went down to Brighton and got a job with a big computer conglomerate called ITT.

I edited their monthly employee newspaper, which also covered their factories in London and South Wales, so I moved between the three places collecting news. I did everything except operate the printing presses – the photography, the layout and the writing – and that was a tremendous learning curve.
I did that for two years, before applying for the BBC’s journalist training scheme, which they’d just started. I’d always been an avid Radio 4 listener, and so when I came to do the part of the entrance test that involved writing news reports it all came naturally to me – I’d learnt by osmosis, really. I got a place, but didn’t take it up because I went to live in France for a year, though I kept in touch with the BBC while I was there and got a job in the BBC Radio newsroom when I came back. I was a sub-editor, which basically meant I was writing the news for the newsreaders at BBC Radio. The newsreaders are not journalists – they’re people chosen for their voices.After a few years I became a general radio reporter, and was sent all over the place, before becoming the correspondent for labour and industrial affairs. This was in the early Eighties, when the unions were very active I seemed to be covering strikes non-stop.

I then had the opportunity to do a small attachment to BBC’s Nationwide, and worked as a reporter for the South-east section; I wanted some experience in television, really. I had been approached on a number of occasions by people asking whether I wanted to make the switch to television, but up until then I had been adamant that I wanted to stay in radio.Then I became pregnant, and while I was on maternity leave I was rung up by John Humphrys to say that the BBC were looking for someone to replace Sue Lawley on the Nine O’Clock News, as she was moving to the new Six O’Clock News. I went in to do a screen test, and much to my astonishment was offered the job. I thought I would have a go, and that if it didn’t work out I could retreat and no one would notice that I had tried it at all.I had two weeks of reading the previous nights’ bulletins in the studio to get used to the idea of being in front of the cameras, and was launched on-screen in July 1984. In 1987 I moved to ITN, initially to present the lunchtime news, and then was switched to News at Ten.