Suitable press slots for a sizeable weekly are in short supply and it's not clear whether the publisher's existing print suppliers, Polestar (which also prints IPC's women's weeklies) and New Jarrold Printing, (which prints Emap's Closer, likely to be a direct competitor) would be able to take the title on.

"I can't see there is that much more spare weekly capacity at these pinch points that everybody wants to print in," said one web offset source. "The market is tightening up we're predicting quite a mess this autumn."

If it comes to fruition the magazine, codenamed Project Reveal, will be NatMags' first celebrity weekly. The publisher is understood to have set aside a 10m launch budget. However, managing director Duncan Edwards has stressed that the project is embryonic and that NatMags' focus "is not exclusively on the weekly market".

H Bauer, which prints some of its titles using its own capacity on the continent, is reported to be planning a rival to lads' weeklies Zoo and Nuts.

Story by Jo Francis