THE trend for the editorships of magazines, radio programmes and even newspapers to be handed over to celebrities so they can air their pet subjects (and, more importantly, help cover staff holidays) is now so well-established that nobody blinks an eye when, say, Katie Price takes over BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour, as she did last Thursday.

Or when the keys to The Beano’s magic kingdom are given to comedian David Walliams. His guest editorship of the UK’s longest-running children’s comic was announced last Friday and he’ll edit a special 44-page 80th birthday edition, to go on sale on Wednesday.

As well as appearing on the front cover, Walliams will feature in a Bash Street Kids strip and has created a new character for a strip titled Moe’s Monkey Feet. He has also commissioned a story in which Dennis the Menace and his canine side-kick Gnasher team up with Minnie the Minx and Bananaman.

“I was thrilled to be invited to guest-edit the Beano,” Walliams said. “I felt rather giddy sitting in the editor’s chair helping to create storylines and introduce my new character to the comic’s fanbase.”

Giddy or not, he joins a long list of actors, politicians, rock stars and royals who have been similarly honoured – and not always with agreeable results. Here are some of the more notable examples. Plus Abi Titmuss.

Bono

“May I say, without guile, I am as sick of messianic rock stars as the next man, woman and child,” ran an editorial in The Independent in 2006, back when the newspaper still existed in the non-virtual world. The writer was a man for whom some say the label “messianic rock star” could have been invented – Bono, frontman with U2. He had been asked to guest edit the edition of May 16 that year to promote the work of RED, an AIDs charity he had set up with Bobby Shriver, a nephew of John F Kennedy. The 16-page motoring section stayed but among Bono’s editorial interventions was an interview with Eddie Izzard (conducted by him) and one with Giorgio Armani, done by Stella McCartney. According to then-editor Simon Kelner, Bono took the job so seriously he even ate his lunch at his desk.

Kate Moss

Moss was asked to guest edit the December 2005/January 2006 edition of French Vogue and, despite early reports that she was threatening to include a cover-mounted CD of her singing a duet with then-boyfriend Pete Doherty, the eventual edition was considered a success – thanks in large part to having four different covers (always bumps up sales), each one inspired by Jean Cocteau’s cult 1946 film La Belle Et La Bete, which is pretty decent source material. Moss’s editorial was accompanied by a picture taken in the Grand Canyon just after she had emerged from a rehab clinic in Arizona. She looks very happy to be out and very ready to party.

Coleen Rooney

Nothing as exalted as French Vogue for Wayne Rooney’s wife. Instead she was asked to guest edit an edition of celebrity magazine Closer in August 2006. Either cementing her reputation as the uber-WAG of the Noughties or damaging it irreparably – it’s hard to say a decade on, and nobody really cares now anyway – she chose to appear on the cover wearing a £14 dress from ASDA. But as editor Jane Johnson recalled, she made it “look worth a million dollars”. Which is about a month’s earnings for her husband, now signed to American team DC United.

Hillary Clinton

In November 2017, being at a bit of a loose end having failed to become the first female president of the United States, Hillary Clinton forgot about running the world’s most powerful country and guest edited Teen Vogue instead. “I love seeing articles about the search for the perfect makeup remover next to essays about running for office,” she wrote in an introductory column in which she also said she was adding her book What Happened to the Teen Vogue book club reading list. As the title suggests, it’s a sort of reflective post-mortem about how she failed to become the first female president of the United States and ended up guest editing Teen Vogue instead.

Kate Middleton

Middleton, aka The Duchess of Cambridge, took over the reins at politics, news and opinion website Huffington Post UK in February 2016. Her grand subject was mental health, particularly among children, and her editorship also saw the start of a campaign with the hashtag #YoungMindsMatter. Michelle Obama, then First Lady of the United States, penned an essay in support but all anybody really wanted to know was what the Duchess wore to work. So, just for the record, she turned up wearing a high-neck white blouse by Reiss, a black, herringbone-patterned bouclé wool skirt by Dolce & Gabbana and black tights. With suede pumps.

PJ Harvey

It doesn’t take much to get the Daily Mail into a self-righteous lather so it was always likely that the diminutive indie rock star’s 2013 stint guest editing BBC Radio 4’s Today programme would manage it. But even PJ Harvey can’t have realised how much the paper would hate such “innovations” as replacing the weather forecast with a Tom Waits song, letting Julian Assange do Thought For The Day, getting Ralph Fiennes on to read verse by Shaker Aamer, the last Briton to be released from Guantanamo Bay, and giving John Pilger free rein to take potshots at David Cameron. The Daily Mail called it “unpatriotic” while the head of the Christian Conservative Fellowship called it “incomprehensible liberal drivel”. Labour MP Dianne Abbott, bless her, seemed to love it, however. “She should do it every day,” she tweeted.

The Dalai Lama

Calling this one a guest editorship is a little rich, but the Tibetan spiritual reader did have some input into the 1992 edition of French Vogue he “edited”, even if it was to just nod sagely and smile politely as a series of layouts and fashion spreads were placed in front of him by then-editor Colombe Pringle. Eight months pregnant at the time, she had flown to his home in northern India with her husband, her art director, a photographer and a journalist. “He was so normal and so open, so modest, so charming,” she later recalled. “He put his hand on my tummy and said ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’. I am not a Buddhist but after a few days the whole team started getting calmer and more reflective”. Wow.

Abi Titmuss

For 10 years, between 2004 and its closure in 2014, Nuts was one of the pre-eminent “lads" magazines”, a publishing sub-genre that looks increasing (and justifiably) old-fashioned and unpalatable in this era of #MeToo and #TimesUp. And for 10 years, controversial glamour model and sometime TV presenter Abi Titmuss, was a regular in its pages. Shortly after its launch, Nuts handed the editorship to her. She gaffer-taped editor Phil Hilton to his seat and gagged him before effecting her takeover. Reflecting on the experience after the tape had been removed Hilton said that Titmuss appeared “delighted to be spending her day tying me up and being paid for it”. He added: “In case you ever wanted to know, gaffer tape can be very painful to remove, especially from the mouth.”