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Gutfield, however, is not leaving the company and will instead take up the non-editorial role of brand communications director at Dennis.

Gutfield is understood to have succumbed to pressure from management to relinquish his high-profile role after he became involved in a couple of controversial incidents inside and outside the office.

He is being replaced by Maxim executive editor Mike Hammer, who in turn will be replaced by Greg Williams, a former editor of Emap's style magazine Arena in the UK.

Williams has been working at Dennis in the US as editor of a one-off test publication called Maxim Goes to the Movies. He has also worked on six-monthly title Maxim Fashion, also owned by Dennis.

Dennis management are understood to have been unhappy with Gutfield after he openly attacked rival magazines. He ran a cartoon strip picturing Maxim's editors rummaging through a skip looking for ideas, as well as running columns attacking the magazine.

The final straw is believed to have come when Gutfield became involved in a public spat with outgoing GQ editor Art Cooper. Gutfield was reported to have been sniping at Cooper over his anti-war stance, among other things, and his comments were printed by the New York Observer.

In response, Cooper wrote a letter to Gutfield's boss, publisher Felix Dennis, snippets of which were published by the New York Times: "I know that very little embarrasses you, pal, but your boy Greg Gutfield is the boorish personification of Nietzsche's observation that 'there is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action'. If you want the right Stuff, you ought to get a new editor. I have some names for you." Cooper added that since Stuff's editor had put his name in the Observer through his stunts, "you might want to give him a raise".

It was not Dennis who responded, however, but Gutfield himself: "It's not often that a senior editor takes the time and trouble to write personally to the owner of a rival publishing company to strongly recommend that one of the editors of said company deserves a raise in salary."

Cooper wrote back to Gutfield saying he was pleased that Gutfield appreciated his "efforts on your behalf" before adding "I have always believed that editors should help each other to pry as much money as possible from miserly magazine owners".

Gutfield provided a column called The Greg Show for the first few issues of Jack, which was today bought by Dennis Publishing for £5.1m. He was editor of Stuff US for three years and oversaw its subscription base grow to 1.2m.

The UK version of Stuff is published by Brand Republic owner Haymarket.

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