Chat magazine. Do you read it? No, thought not. Neither do I, generally, unless I happen to be spending an unhappy hour or two in a hospital waiting room.

The reason I'm asking, is because of a colleague's recent run-in with a person from the "print will be dead in two years' time" school of tadpole-brained Muppets who can't see beyond the end of their own nose.

Said Muppet is a London-based meeja type who exists in world blinkered by his own experiences. Well here's a flash: Just because you spend all day sitting at a computer and have spare cash to splash on an iPad, matey boy, it doesn't mean everyone does.

Which brings me back to Chat. A quote from a past editor about this magazine's readership described a typical reader as someone who has 'three children by three different prisoners'. I laughed out loud.

But Chat is serious business for publisher IPC Media. The latest ABC circulation figure for this mag is 430,674 copies a week, with a readership of more than 1m. Similarly, one could cite Bauer's Take a Break, the leader in the 'true life' space with a weekly circulation of more than 855,000. Or how about a rather more genteel title, such as DC Thomson's The People's Friend (ABC: 291,394). Therein lies one of the beauties of magazines, there's something for everyone.

I'm sure meeja Muppet man doesn't read any of these titles, but that doesn't excuse him for being oblivious to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are buying printed products he's probably never even heard of every bloody week.

Recommended therapy: observe the newsstand at a WH Smith or big supermarket in, say, Hull for a valuable slice of real-world print media consumption that's very much alive.

It's a worry, of course, that anyone could be this dim and deluded. That's why I like to keep a few stats such as the ones above to hand, in case I'm ever unfortunate enough to find myself in conversation with someone similarly afflicted.  

Oh, and if Muppet man is correct, I'll eat his iPad and buy him a new one.