US Edition TINA BROWN, the British editor who conquered the New York publishing world, last night dismissed as "noise" the outpourings of schadenfreude that greeted the closure of her latest magazine, Talk, the monthly glossy she founded with backing from the Miramax film studio.
Miss Brown, who had earned her reputation - and some hostility - by previously reviving Vanity Fair, the epitome of Hollywood style, and the cerebral The New Yorker, told The Telegraph she had been "trashed" enough in recent years to be inured to carping about the failure of Talk, which closed on Friday.
With her husband Harry Evans, the former editor of The Sunday Times, Miss Brown has been one of the most prominent features of the New York literary and political circuit for nearly two decades.
The magazine's demise was greeted with the headline "Talk Shuts Up" in yesterday's New York Post, which said it had foundered in what the paper gloatingly called "a sea of red ink".
Henry Porter, the editor of the British edition of the rival Vanity Fair, was also less than complimentary about Miss Brown's editing and her prospects. "She was always obsessed with the magic circle of hot fashionable things that she wanted to have in her magazine," he said.
"She would always say: 'what's hot at the moment, where's the heat?' I think she lost the sense of where that 'heat' was." He added: "I do think the whole 'Harry and Tina' thing is over now."
Miss Brown, who rose to prominence editing Tatler at the age of 25, said last night: "I know there is going to be a lot of back-biting, of course, but you know I've been trashed for three years and it's really just part of life in this world. The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.
"I wouldn't even say it was an American thing, I would say it was invented in England actually. That's all noise, if you know what I mean. My reputation rests on four magazines - three great successes, one that was a great experiment. I don't feel in any way down. No big career doesn't have one flame-out in it and there's nobody more boring than the undefeated."
In typically ebullient style, Ms Brown launched Talk in August 1999 with a huge party under the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour, attended by stars such as Madonna and Robert de Niro.
Just the night before the magazine folded Miss Brown threw another lavish party in Beverley Hills for the Golden Globe awards, with what critics said were mostly B-list Hollywood stars.
She was already aware of the decision to close the magazine but did not tell her colleagues - and spent much of the evening huddled in serious poolside conversation with Michael Eisner, the chairman of Disney, which through Miramax Films had a share in Talk.
Miss Brown had taken the decision to end her longstanding relationship with Conde Nast, which owns Tatler, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, in part because it offered the prospect of making her a substantial fortune.
The Newhouse family, which owns Conde Nast, had never offered editors a stake in the firm: Harvey Weinstein, the head of Miramax, however, was prepared to offer Miss Brown a substantial portion of his 50 per cent stake in the magazine. The other main backer was the Hearst magazine empire.
Despite the magazine's ability to attract a steady stream of leading stars for its covers, however, it failed to find its niche, and Miss Brown found that Talk's corporate backers were less patient than the Newhouses. The magazine ran up losses estimated at $55 million (£38 million) before the announcement last week that it would close.
Miss Brown said that, despite the failure of the magazine, she had no regrets about embarking on the project. "I was at the New Yorker, I had had a wonderful time for nearly seven years and wanted to go and do something on my own, I wanted to try to do that. I would have always regretted it if I hadn't."
She also said she had no plans to return to Britain. "Harold and I are staying in New York for the moment. I would never say never about returning to Britain, but at the moment it would have a lot to unravel in order to move.
"You will see Tina Brown hopefully at the head of a very successful book company for the moment and I certainly have no plans to retire and do my knitting. I'm not in a hurry to take a magazine in an advertising recession, but don't rule out anything."