Sunday Mirror editor-in-chief and then editorial director of Mirror Group, where he pushed the daily title, the "Daily Mirror", to a circulation in excess of five million copies. Reflecting strongly prevailing cultural views across the papers across the generations, in 1952, the "Sunday Pictorial" ran a three-part series entitled "Evil Men" promising an "end to the conspiracy of silence" about homosexuality in Britain. "Most people know there are such things – 'pansies' – mincing, effeminate, young men who call themselves queers (...) but simple decent folk regard them as freaks and rarities." The "Sunday Pictorial" compared homosexuality to a "spreading fungus" that
Sunday Herald then led by chairman Gus Macdonald, decided to create a Sunday sister for its existing national morning title "The Herald", because the Glasgow-based media group was losing advertising revenue to rival newspaper publishers every Sunday. In March 1998 the media company's board appointed Andrew Jaspan, then the publisher and managing director of "The Big Issue" and a former editor of "Scotland on Sunday", "The Scotsman" and "The Observer" to examine the business case for launching a new Sunday title. In October 1998 SMG (now known as STV Group plc), which also owns the broadcaster STV, committed to putting £10 million