About Hecklerspray

Recently voted among the top 50 most powerful blogs on the planet by a national UK newspaper, Hecklerspray is essentially gossip for grown-ups. It’s entertainment news with a salty twist.

Far from the fawning celebrity sites you normally find on the internet, Hecklerspray tries to bring its readers a unique and uncompromising stance on the world of the feckless and famous. These include film, music, TV, videogame reviews you know you can trust, plus celebrity gossip and news which shoots straight from the hip.

It’s an approach that has earned us a loyal following of almost a million unique users a month – a figure that keeps growing and growing.

We’ve even been described as the ‘the British Perez Hilton’ but, unlike our famous, blabber-mouthed American rival, we let our content do the talking for us.

Founded in London but with desks all over the world, we give our readers from all over the world a regular fix of our biting brand of entertainment news.

What the papers say

Don’t just take our word for any of this - here’s what the press have to say about us:

The Observer (UK national Sunday newspaper)
After placing us in their ‘Top 50 Most Powerful Blogs’ in March 2008:

“The internet’s not exactly short of gossip websites providing scurrilous rumours of who did what to whom, but some stand out from the rest. Sharply written and often laugh-out-loud funny, Hecklerspray has been called the British alternative to Perez Hilton, but it’s different in important ways: the emphasis here is on style and wit, with a stated aim to ‘chronicle the ups and downs of all that is populist and niche within the murky world of entertainment’.”

The Guardian (UK national daily newspaper)

We were awarded “website of the week” in their much-coveted weekly pullout The Guide.

The Times (UK national daily newspaper)

“Website of the week.”

The Metro (a free London newspaper)

Gave us an award for “Best British Entertainment Blog” in April 2007.

South London Press (local newspaper)

“Quite good”

Ok, we just made this one up.

We’re stars of TV and radio

Sky News TV (worldwide news channel)

Our editor, Stuart Heritage, is a regular contributor, giving his ‘expert’ opinions on what is happening on the internet.

Dave Fanning’s show (International radio show)

Our editor, Stuart Heritage, and celebrity ‘expert’ is a regular telephone interviewee

Current TV

Regular writer CJ Davies is a semi-regular contributor of material

And of course the web loves us too

Geistweg.com – American blog
“Refined sarcasm to the point of art”

justcharlotte.co.uk - The unofficial Charlotte Church website

“offensive” (We’re very proud of that one.)

Excite - Webtwitcher feature
“If you’ve not read this excellent blog, add the RSS feed for daily belly laughs.”

Classic Rock magazine’s website
“An absolute classic”

TheWeekDaily.com – US news website
Our stories and opinions on the entertainment world are regularly used by this lively site.

How many people read Hecklerspray?

Ok, so if it’s numbers you want – then it’s number you’ll get!

Since launching in May 2005, our traffic has rocketed. And we have not finished yet! We are currently in the middle of revamping the site, which we believe will take us to the next level.

Saying that, we’re doing pretty well as it is. In April 2008, according to Google Analytics, Hecklerspray generated 1,047,674 page impressions, from 722, 614, unique users. This makes us the biggest UK-based (and probably European) independent entertainment blog. Not that we’re bragging about it.

Here are a few bite-sized facts to sink your teeth into:

1.  Our biggest day was a whopping 168,481 page impressions. We attracted 137,806 uniques.

2.  We get a lot of love from the social media sites, which shows just how much the notoriously hard-to-please internet community has taken us to their hearts.

What kind of people are they?

So who actually reads our stories? Well, based on figures supplied by www.quantcast.com, we can tell you:

1. Hecklerspray readers tend to be male (62 per cent).

2. They come from all age groups. The biggest is the 25-34 bracket (24 per cent), but it’s a pretty even spread: 45-54 (19 per cent), 35-44 (18 per cent), 18-24 and 55-64 (both 16 per cent) and 65+ (eight per cent).

3. They tend to be high earners. The $60k-$100k bracket accounts for 29 per cent of our traffic, while 28 per cent of our reader earn more than $100k.

Where do they come from?

This fluctuates from month to month. Last month was as follows:

US – 60.69%
UK – 12.25%
Canada –6.93%
Australia –2.34%.

And the long tail thereafter.

In terms of cities, we are most popular among the beautiful people of London, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Dublin and Sydney.

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We love hearing from media planners, buyers and other advertising folks - email hecklerspray@gmail.com for details.

Now meet the writers…