There is no denying that the star of the latest National Readership Survey results is the London Evening Standard, which now has an estimated readership of 1,394,000, up 133% year on year.
This dovetails with the Standard going free and boosting its distribution to 600,000 and puts the London paper's estimated readership above that of several national papers, including the Guardian (down 8% year on year to 1,147,000) and the Financial Times (up 4% year on year to 434,000).
Remember, the paper only went free in October and these figures show estimates of average issue readership over all of last year.
The survey also puts the Standard's estimated readership above that of the Independent (671,000, down 2% year on year), a timely reminder of what might be in store when Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev finalises his purchase of the Independent, which is in its final stages and could complete at anytime.
One plan under consideration by Lebedev is to make the Independent free or part-free, and thus send readership soaring by a similar margin.
It is worth noting that the Independent on Sunday, which Lebedev could close or merge with the Saturday paper when he buys it, was one of the worst performing titles in the survey, with estimated readership down 15% year on year to an average of 612,000.
For the national titles, the best result was the Daily Star, up 11% to 1,577,000, mirrored by the Daily Star Sunday, also up 11% to 943,000.
The Daily Telegraph was stable at 1,905,000, as was its sister paper the Sunday Telegraph at 1,708,000. The Daily Express was also stable at 1,577,000, but the Sunday Express fell 7% to 1,628,000.
The national freesheet Metro was up 8% to 3,597,000, while the Sunday Times was up 1% to 3,238,000.
Heavy fallers included the People, down 12% to 1,345,000, while the estimated figure for the combined Daily Mirror/Record papers was down 7% to 4,404,000.
The Sun remains the most read paper in the country, with 7,761,000 readers, down 1%, while the News of the World was read by 7,650,000, down 2%.
In Sunday newspapers, the Observer was down 6% to 1,291,000, the Mail on Sunday fell 4% to 5,387 while the Sunday Mirror readership dropped 2% to 3,884,000.
Estimated readership of the Times declined 2% to 1,773,000 while the Daily Mail was down 3% to 4,934,000.
The figures differ from the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures because they measure readers and not sales and because they are estimates rather than hard data.
Oddly, because of the way NRS collects its data, it does not guarantee that all its reported readership changes are "real" changes, yet it still publishes them. Most of the changes could just be due to sample variations because of the way that the NRS changes its panel of British readers.
