Ted and Joanne

So, the country's new taste-maker is Ted Verity, editor of the Mail in print across seven days. Ted, mostly recently the Mail's prime witness in their court battle with Meghan Markle, is a contemporary of David Miliband. They studied PPE together at Corpus Christi, Oxford, and in their second year, shared a house with nine others somewhere 'off the Cowley Road'.  He describes Miliband now as an 'old friend' although the last time they had dinner together was around 2003. 

Young Ted took his PPE to the Stoke Evening Sentinel, before joining Associated Newspapers in 1990, as a reporter and then showbusiness supremo. He was very much a Paul Dacre protege, rising quickly through the ranks, to be made editor of Dacre's pet section, Femail. He was sent to sort out the Mail's papers in Ireland, and there Ted found his own protegee in columnist Joanne Hegarty, subsequently to become Mrs Verity in 2011. He returned to a senior executive role in charging of developing the paper's online services and then the Mail on Sunday.

Mrs Verity's Instagram account describes her as  "Journalist, Stylist, & Mum. The Chic List Columnist In You Magazine. Less is more. Working on a book."   Mr Verity's leader in today's Mail On Sunday is an extended version of Paul Dacre's letter of withdrawal from the process to find a new chair for Ofcom.