Tabloid Tales. Gossip flies as a Russian ex-diplomat takes over the Evening Standard

Britain has a new press proprietor, but the odd thing is that, until a few days ago, few people knew much about the fellow, save that he was a "Russian oligarch" and "former KGB spy."

His name is Alexander Lebedev, and he has just bought the Evening Standard

Visitors to London have probably noticed the Standard or at least its newsstands, which tend to be manned by characterful barkers screaming, "Get yer West End final!" The paper gains its influence not so much from its circulation of just under 300,000 as from the fact that it is delivered to the newsrooms of London's other media outlets and therefore helps them form their post-prandial news judgments. A little nudge after lunch is so jolly helpful when deciding what angle to take on a story, don't you find?

The tone of the Standard is pretty measured. Its politics are mixed, abjuring clamor and vulgarity, its default position metropolitan liberal rather than peppery. During the recent general elections, it urged its readers to vote for Tony Blair's Labor Party, but once the great thespian Blair had gone, the paper started to flirt with the rejuvenated opposition Conservative Party. Last year it certainly supported the Conservatives' candidate for the London mayoralty, Boris Johnson, and was credited with winning him that election.

Enter Comrade Lebedev, onetime intelligence officer at the Russian Embassy in London. Since those days he has made himself a fortune, owning chunks of Aeroflot and Moscow's Novaya Gazeta newspaper, among other interests. He also has the National Reserve Bank to his name. And now he owns the newspaper, which, it is said, he read closely as a young KGB officer at his embassy desk--"the London Evening Standardski," as it is already called by London's wine-bar wits.

He bought the Standard for a nominal 1 pound from Viscount Rothermere, scion of a newspaper dynasty. Lord Rothermere and his Associated Newspapers (for whom I work) had owned the Standard for some 30 years but were losing about 20 million pounds a year on the title and had started to despair of the thing, despite loving it very much. Those of us who drive vintage Land Rovers will know the feeling.

Lebedev says he has at least 30 million pounds to burn on the Standard. The paper's staff hope this is true. They have read with worry that Lebedev's wallet is not as thick as it was before the world financial crisis.

London's conspiracy theorists, while not speculating that the paper has been bought as a form of life insurance for the oligarch or as a bauble for his "playboy" son, have been clicking their knitting needles over Lebedev's reported closeness to Matthew Freud.

Ah, Freud, one of the city's more persistent publicists. You know the type: remorseless networker, party beast, eyes like a badger, insistence made flesh. Tireless Mr. Freud happens to be married to Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert. It has been noted that the Standard sale has been assiduously reported by old man Murdoch's London Times.

Indeed, only the other day the Times dispatched two of its most glamorous ladies to interview Lebedev in Moscow. They returned with an account so admiring that it could almost have been dictated by Freud himself! We were told that Lebedev was an assiduous student of Shakespeare, that in London he lives in a house once occupied by Lord Byron, that he "fell in love" with Britain during his KGB days and that he is "not interested in making money." Indeed, he bought the Standard as "an act of public service."

Not interested in making money? Just as well. London's newspaper industry is in the glums at present. But the arrival of Lebedev has given us all something to gossip about.