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A rumbling dispute between the editors of GQ and Esquire intensified last week when GQ's publishing director, Peter Stuart, dashed off a letter to media agencies complaining about Esquire's representation of its ABC figures.

The extraordinary move followed Esquire editor Peter Howarth's defence of his title's drastic circulation drop between January and June this year. In an article for ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 and a subsequent piece in the Evening Standard, Howarth claimed that Esquire's 30 per cent ABC slide was perfectly predictable given his decision to remove scantily clad women from the magazine's covers.

He coolly argued that his title's offering to advertisers had, in fact, improved. Esquire was the only men's magazine to reject sex as a selling point and, consequently, its ABC1 profile had risen dramatically, making it by far the most upmarket title in the sector.

GQ's editor, Dylan Jones, responded with his own article, ridiculing Esquire's claim to exclusive anti-lads' mag status. Jones rounded off his rebuttal by asking whether GQ's advertisers are naive enough to believe his rival. 'I doubt it,' he concluded. 'Their bullshit detectors probably go all the way up to 11.'

Apparently, Stuart was not quite as confident. His letter took the particularly unusual step of taking Howarth to task on the science of each of his specific claims. Where Howarth claimed Esquire had lost 30,000 readers, Stuart pointed out that the magazine's actual loss of readers amounted to 113,000.

Quoting National Readership Surveys figures, and sounding rather like a vindictive teacher humiliating a downtrodden pupil, he rapped the Esquire editor for a series of other inaccuracies.

Esquire's rise in ABC1 profile was from 68 to 78 per cent, not the 65 to 80 per cent that Howarth saw fit to claim. Worse, Esquire's gains had come in the C1 category, not the exclusive AB category in which GQ still led. The majority of Esquire's lost readers were not 'teenagers' as Howarth claimed, but fully fledged 35- to 44-year-old adults. Ads hadn't begun to roll in under the new no-t&a philosophy. In fact, Esquire had underperformed in the ad sales market. You can almost hear Stuart stalking back to the blackboard, yelling: 'Stop snivelling, boy.'

Talk about kicking a man when he's down. At first glance, GQ's response to Esquire's damage limitation seems like a massive overreaction. For a start, Howarth barely mentioned the Conde Nast title by name in either of his articles, talking instead about the fleshy predilections of the men's market in general. It's hard to interpret his defence of his record as an assault on GQ's position. Secondly, as we've been hearing for months, Esquire's circulation drop in August's ABCs was catastrophic. Can Stuart and Jones really be feeling threatened by what their fallen rival might have to say?

Stuart recognises the peculiarity of sending the letter but maintains that it was necessary. 'It's the first time I've ever written a letter like this to anybody,' he says. 'But Peter Howarth was trying to claim a loss as a victory.'

Stuart claims that the reaction of media agencies to the letter has been overwhelmingly positive. And there were several voices of support. 'If I was in Peter's shoes, I'd protect my position,' Tim Kirkman, Carat's press director, says.

In one sense, the position of Conde Nast titles such as GQ is under more obvious threat than usual. Earlier this month, the National Magazine Company grouped its top-end titles, including Esquire, into a new Affluent division. It seemed a clear challenge to Conde Nast's claim to exclusive AB readers. It is no coincidence then that a confrontation about readership profiles should suddenly have erupted between the two publishers. Howarth's claims for Esquire are, in many ways, the first public challenge to Conde Nast's perceived domination of this group of readers.

The men's market, in particular, is ripe for such a confrontation. With most titles experiencing static ABC figures, a flattering NRS profile is particularly crucial. When titles are unable to boast large circulation increases, the significance of delivering a better quality of reader grows.

'Any sales force with a switched-on attitude to their product will analyse the data to hell and back to find areas that they can make an argument for,' Roger Pratt, the managing director of NRS, says.

The timing of Stuart's letter is also no surprise. Tis the season for planning 2001 media schedules and having the last word on reader profiles couldn't be more crucial. 'It's a great time to write something like this,' Kirkman says.

The most dramatic magazine spat of recent times also kicked off in the early autumn. Back in 1998, Hello! successfully sued OK! over releasing inaccurate estimates of the two magazines' circulation. Hello!'s publishing director, Sally Cartwright, maintains that the year-long case was worth it, but points out that an ABC dispute gives much firmer grounds for action than one concerned with reader profiles.

'NRS is an industry standard estimate and the best currency we have,' she says. 'But it is an estimate and it can be challenged. An ABC figure is absolute and very few people would let an inaccuracy about it pass.'

Indeed, this year's examples of ABC inaccuracies have been sorted out with the minimum of fuss. BBC Worldwide extracted industry-wide apologies after inaccurate reports gave NatMags credit for being the country's second largest publisher, and left it at that. They took a similarly tolerant view when ABC mistakenly reported a disastrous overall drop in BBC Worldwide's circulation last month.

Stuart, on the other hand, seems to worry that the grey areas of NRS are more vulnerable to the silky arguments of a top-class spinner, such as, say, Howarth. 'People tend to believe editors and not question what they say,' he argues. 'Editors are good with words. They should probably leave the figures alone.'

The irony of the dispute is that Conde Nast is posturing over NRS data that is, in many ways, out of date. NRS surveys are conducted every month, but it takes 12 such surveys to build up a wholly accurate picture of a magazine's readership.

Howarth switched Esquire's covers just over six months ago, so it will take at least another half year before the full effect of the change on readership profile becomes clear.