Paul Merrill, 35
The editor
Why? In March, Merrill will launch Emap's £8m Heat for lads, so-secret it doesn't have a proper name, just 'Project Tyson'.
Qualifications: Two-and-a-half years ago he took over at the ailing women's weekly, Chat. It was out with standard women's weekly fodder and in with coverlines like 'A ghost nurse changed my nighty' (true story), competitions to find Britain's sexiest ginger man, and tried and tested features on low-tar fags. Chat threw off its sickly pallor to become the second biggest-selling women's magazine in the UK.
Soundbite: 'I love Chat readers, but it's time to leave before I end up wearing shapely leggings and gold jewellery'
Julia Davis, 37
The scriptwriter
Why? She's written and stars in the funniest new sitcom of 2004, Nighty Night.
Qualifications: Davis has a genius for expressing the unsavoury. In Nighty Night she plays Jill, a West Country hairdresser who is as grotesque and ruthless as any of the other troubled souls she's brought to Brass Eye, I'm Alan Partridge or Big Train. Things really took off for the late starter when she starred in Human Remains with old friend Rob Brydon - and won an RTS award.
Soundbite: 'I'm wary of losing my anonymity, but then I like to think nobody would recognise me as any of my monstrous characters anyway'
Luke Sutherland, 32
The novelist
Why? Shortlisted writer who may go all the way with his new don't-call-it-a-memoir novel.
Qualifications: Venus As A Boy might not be out until March, but advance copies of the novel are already well thumbed. 'It's certainly caused more explosive reactions than anything I've done before,' he concedes - and that includes his 1998 debut novel, Jelly Roll, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize, and a clutch of acclaimed indie albums as vocalist and musician, with bands such as Mogwai and Long Fin Killie. Along with the fantastical - Venus's main protagonist turns gold, for example - Sutherland has included intense autobiographical elements from his often brutal childhood in Orkney. It's a powerful and haunting read that's likely to be huge, but is he prepared for all this? 'It's so weird, everyone keeps asking me that,' he says. 'No, probably not.'
Soundbite: 'The book has been describes as realist magicalism - which I like'
Cecelia Ahern, 21
The writer
Why? Because when the 21-year-old daughter of the Irish prime minister wrote her debut novel, PS, I Love You, the US rights alone went for a cool $1m.
Qualifications: It's all happened pretty quickly for the youngest member of Ireland's First Family (her brother-in-law happens to be Nicky from Westlife). Two days into an MA in film studies she decided to quit the course because an idea she'd had for a novel just wouldn't go away. Writing through the night, PS, I Love You was delivered in record speed, and then the offers started - 'There were, like, 15 in a row. Every day a different country would sign up. I remember feeling quite disappointed when it stopped,' she laughs.
Soundbite: On her entry in Ireland's 2000 Eurovision song, she says, 'Oh, God, I'm pretty glad now that we didn't get through' º
Lucy Prebble, 22
The playwright
Why? Award-winning dramatist whose first full-length play received brilliant reviews at London's Royal Court.
Qualifications: Precocious Prebble won a student drama prize for her first one-act play while at Sheffield University. Her next, The Sugar Syndrome, was a delicate treatment of the relationship between a middle-aged gay paedophile and a bulimic teenager. It went down so well at the Royal Court, they've commissioned her to write another piece, and she's giving up the day job - her secretarial post at the National Theatre. 'If I'm still at the National in a few months' time they'll probably carry me out.'
Soundbite: 'I'm not interested in writing about things that don't frighten me a bit'
Conrad Shawcross, 26
The artist
Why? Everyone is buying him.
Qualifications: Since coming to critical attention in the 2001 New Contemporaries exhibition, with a modified 3.6-litre Ford Capri, the 26-year-old's career has been in overdrive. A first solo exhibition at London's Entwistle gallery earlier this year of a ponderous, beautiful wooden machine that spun yarn was snaffled up by Charles Saatchi. And when Shawcross's work was shown at the Frieze Art Fair this October, it wasn't for sale for long: Alexander McQueen bought it. In 2004 Shawcross has his first solo exhibition in Germany and is installing a trail of sculptures in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
Soundbite: 'I hope my work doesn't sound too pessimistic. I'd like to think of it more as romantic' Niru Ratnam
Anne-Marie Duff, 33
The actress
Why? She's the shell-suited matriarch in Shameless - a kind of Queer As Council Estate Folk from Clocking Off's creator Paul Abbott, on your screens in January.
Qualifications: Duff started in theatre, sharing a stage with the likes of Helen Mirren and Ian Holm, and was nominated for an Olivier. Her portrayals of downtrodden Irish girls have also turned the west Londoner into a kind of poster girl for Hibernian misery. Despite having Irish parents, she's mystified - 'I've never pretended I was from up a mountain in Kerry' - but playing Margaret in this year's acclaimed film The Magdalene Sisters has helped catapult her into the limelight, and into a role in the recent BBC drama Charles II.
Soundbite: 'I'm usually in a corset, or in Ireland having a breakdown, but I'm looking forward to playing some-thing a bit nasty soon. I'd love a vampy, bitchy lawyer'
Morgan Meunier, 30
The chef
Why? Award-winning French chef whose restaurant, Morgan M, is fast replacing Blair's old haunt Granita as Islington's upscale eatery of choice.
Qualifications: Meunier is already seriously decorated. Having trained under the high priests of French cooking, including Michel Guerard, he came to England and, at 26, gained his first Michelin star, at Monsieur Max in Twickenham. He then transferred to the Admiralty, which received a Time Out Award during his tenure. He began planning his own north London venture two years ago, in which his influence is everywhere - he's even done the paintings.
Soundbite: 'Sometimes we are very focused on what we can't do. I don't think like that. Nothing can stop me'
Nina Conti, 29
The ventriloquist
Why? The former RSC actress is making ventriloquism cutting-edge comedy.
Qualifications: Conti, daughter of Tom, was inspired when theatre maverick Ken Campbell handed out 'teach yourself ventriloquism' kits. In her first gig her puppet, a very cheeky monkey (Monk), humped a pint glass. The act brought the house down and took her on to win last year's BBC New Comedy Award. Next year there's a Channel 4 pilot show with Monk and she's doing the voices for an animation show called Streatham Hill.
Soundbite: 'I've got to come clean: I'm using Monk mark two. The first one got a cracked face'
Martino Gamper, 31
The designer
Why? He has a thing about corners.
Qualifications: The wooden bench that the east London-based, Italian-born designed as part of his degree show for the Royal College of Art in 2000, and which won him the Peugeot Oxo Design Award for 2003, is all about angles. When you see it, you think someone is playing a trick. It looks as though it will fall over if you sit on it. But, in fact, the bench is incredibly strong and sturdy. 'It's a combination of getting the angles and the mitres right,' he explains. As well as collecting old bits of furniture he finds in skips, which he remakes into what he calls 'furniture while you wait', in January, a 90-page book about his work to date will be published in collaboration with the graphic design collective, Abake. And of course, Gamper is open to commissions.
Soundbite: 'You have to use a very good glue.'
