Holy Moly! This new gossip website is juicier than Popbitch

British online gossip site Holy Moly has become so popular that, for a short spell earlier this year, it had to stop accepting new subscribers. Its success could be down to the fact that it has superior sources and more salacious stories than rival sites. Or that Popbitch has become too ubiquitous for those who like their tittle-tattle to be a bit elitist.

British online gossip site Holy Moly has become so popular that, for a short spell earlier this year, it had to stop accepting new subscribers. Its success could be down to the fact that it has superior sources and more salacious stories than rival sites. Or that Popbitch has become too ubiquitous for those who like their tittle-tattle to be a bit elitist.

But the most important factor is probably the dark, twisted and angry mind of its creator who says of British celebrity culture: "It's like being cold-called at home by Jehovah's Witnesses. You didn't ask for their opinion; they are pointless to your existence, serving no use whatsoever. And occasionally you want to answer the door naked, masturbating, with a rictus grin on your face just to see their reaction. Or is that just me?"

I'm communicating via email with Holy Moly's shadowy overlord. He is probably sitting at his computer in a dimly lit room surrounded by pictures of celebrities with their eyes cut out and half-melted wax effigies of Soho's media glitterati. Yes, one of them might be an effigy of you. It's disconcerting, isn't it? All he will tell me about himself is this: he is 30, lives in London, wears "fabulous shoes", is obsessed with gadgets and is extremely successful.

He also lets slip that he works, or at least has worked, in television. He was putting together a TV pitch based on another website (Popbitch?). Just before he was about to meet the broadcaster with his proposal, the website withdrew its backing for the venture. In a panic, he changed the entire pitch to surround an imaginary website he named Holy Moly. A pitch for a show about a non-existent website was never going to get very far but he decided to get Holy Moly up and running anyway. "It became an easy way to vent my spleen at idiotic people," he explains.

This man obviously has a great deal to get off his chest. Sections on his site include The Rules of Modern Life, eg "Chips should never cost more than a pound", "The only people you should address as 'Brother' are your male siblings and monks". More than just a cheap gossip site, it's a brilliantly funny forum for those consumed with hatred for the modern media bubble in which most of them live.

But the gossip's great, too: it's assembled by a seemingly endless network of moles deeply imbedded at the heart of the celeb industry. Where else would you get to read choice extracts from the BBC's complaints log? Or a spectacular first-hand account of the Battle of the Buffet? Now Mr Holy Moly claims he has a subscribers list amounting to "more than 100,000 but less than a million" and that the site receives "19 million unique hits per month". So how far can he take a website which is quickly becoming (probably to his own disgust) Britain's most talked about new site?

"Sponsors are understandably nervous about associating themselves," he admits. "And there is no robust online business model for selling newsletters to a mass audience - but there are ways to make money."

Next year, he will launch a desktop alert service and start to seek out advertisers. Balancing commercial concerns with slanderous, offensive and swear-word riddled content is likely to prove a challenge. But it's one that similar websites have managed to cope with.

"None of our advertisers have tried to get involved with editorial," says Camilla Wright of Popbitch. "But we have had to turn some big advertisers down because we weren't sure that a partnership with them would work."

But Mr Holy Moly reckons advertising isn't the only way to make a few quid out of his site. "I was told by a marketing wanker that brand extension is the way forward," he muses. "I may just have to dust off that TV show and start whoring myself around London's trendy Soho with my own-brand chocolate bar and pants..."

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