By Chris Summers BBC News Online

Richard Desmond has never been a man to go with the flow.

Sunday Star facts

First new tabloid since Today in 1986 Editor will be Hugh Whittow At 35p, it's cheaper than rivals Daily Star sales up 15.98% in past year to 862,782

So it should not be surprising that while the rest of the newspaper and magazine industry is retreating in the midst of an advertising slump he is launching a new title.

This weekend more than a million copies of the new Sunday version of the Daily Star will hit the streets of the UK.

It will enter a crowded market.

The real problem is getting sales into the hands of punters, no-one is exactly leaping out of bed on a Sunday morning now are they? Sundays are a very difficult market to crack

Maggie Brown Media pundit

All the red tops have reported year-on-year falls in circulation: the News of the World (down 1.32%), The People (-3.63%), the Sunday Mirror (-0.03%) and the Sunday Sport (-7.76%)

So is there any reason - apart from bloody-mindedness - why Mr Desmond should decide to launch a new paper, the first new tabloid since the doomed Today in 1986?

Media pundit Maggie Brown told BBC News Online: "The Star has been the only tabloid growing, through a mixture of football, sex etc, despite experts believing throughout the 1990s it was bound to fold. So expanding the brand may make sense.

'Rivals worried'

"I do know that the News of the World, which is the market leader, and The People are pretty worried.

"Their problem is that they have to remain family newspapers, and cannot become too raunchy.

Hugh Whittow: "We've got huge hopes and are aiming for 1m sales"

But she said: "The real problem is getting sales into the hands of punters, no-one is exactly leaping out of bed on a Sunday morning now are they?

"Sundays are a very difficult market to crack for that reason."

The new paper's editor, Hugh Whittow, told BBC News Online they believed readers of the Daily Star - the "white van man" - were not buying Sunday papers at the moment but would buy the clumsily-titled Daily Star Sunday.

He denied the Star's appeal was based on smut and added: "There are smutty papers and we are not one. We are glamorous and funny and we provide the news.

"If you want heavy news or you want Tony Blair's daily diary you don't buy the Star."

There are smutty papers and we are not one. We are glamorous and funny and we provide the news.

Hugh Whittow

He said sport would be a big part of the new paper and revealed that they had signed up former Manchester United and England captain Brian Robson as a columnist and would be running a big feature on record-breaking jockey Tony McCoy.

Sources within the Star's offices at Blackfriars Bridge suggest the Daily Star Sunday would cost 35p. Most red tops cost 65p.

Mr Whittow told BBC News Online: "It will be considerably cheaper than the other red tops and that will give us an advantage."

BBC media correspondent Torin Douglas said: "The Daily Star has been the biggest success for Richard Desmond since he took over Express Newspapers. Its circulation has gone up dramatically.

"The diet of topless girls, celebrities and football has a certain appeal and he wants to extend that to a Sunday paper."

'Saturated' market

But he said it did appear the Sunday newspaper market was "saturated".

Douglas said: "The question is how the Daily Star Sunday, with a limited budget, can make a dent into that market."

He said the best way to succeed as a tabloid was either by making a lot of celebrity buy-ups or by investing in a large team of investigative journalists who can dig up scoops.

"But both cost money and their rivals - News International and Trinity Mirror - have got much deeper pockets than Mr Desmond has," said Douglas.

He said Mr Desmond had always made much of his co-ownership of OK! magazine, which provides opportunities for celebrity scoops and picture stories.

Douglas said: "There is only one edition of OK! a week and you can't spread that too thinly if you are already using it for the Daily Express, the Sunday Express and the Daily Star."

But he said there were reasons for hope: "The autumn is always a good time of year to launch, because there is a lot of news around and there is also a lot of advertising in the run-up to Christmas.

"If they get a bright and breezy package they might do well."

Mr Whittow said: "We've got huge hopes and we are aiming for a million sales. We have got no reason to doubt this will be a success."