Heat has soared on the back of a growing appetite of teenagers and 20-somethings for celebrity gossip. Recent big-selling issues have included interviews with 'Big Brother 3' winner Kate Lawler and, this week, overweight loser Jade Goody, who is featured on the cover with a bag of chips.
Emap's success with Heat spurred it on to launch teenage spin-off Sneak in April. It is too early for Sneak to get an ABC, but reports suggest it has been selling well.
The circulation increase for one of the UK's most successful launches to date will have seen it almost double its circulation in the last year.
In the last set of ABCs for the July to December 2001 period, the three-year-old Heat saw its circulation snowball to 335,304, representing a 106% year-on-year circulation rise.
At the last ABCs, Heat was still a long way behind its celebrity magazine rivals Now, which knocked Hello! off the top spot in the celebrity market with a 16.2% increase year on year to 552,774 in July to December.
The increase in Heat's circulation should put it comfortably ahead of OK! magazine, which in the last ABCs lost 16.9% and fell back to 486,858, and Hello!, which also lost ground last time dropping 4.8% to 526,947.
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