Guido speculated last week that more people would be coming here for their political news than The Times and the as-of-yet unconfirmed numbers from the first month of the pay-wall won’t make for comfortable reading down Wapping way.  Dan Sabbagh, formerly The Times’ media correspondent, blogs at Beehive City that his sources in Wapping say the figures are 15,000 paying for the content on the web with a further 12,500 paying for the iPad app. Which implies that half as many people now read the Thunderer online as read Guido daily.*

The plan was always fewer, more loyal readers, but unless the Mandy-mania had people flocking to the site last week in tens of thousands, this could get rather embarrassing.

*If it is any consolation to Rupert Murdoch, the two ways readers can pay to subscribe to this blog – via LexisNexis and Amazon’s Kindle – generate about enough revenue to buy a pint per month.