Somewhere, far, far away on the horizon, there is a day when all of this will be over: when we will no longer have to wade through countless editorials advising how to dress a la Sex and the City (corsage, heels, air of post-coital abandon), when we will no longer be expected to care about Mr Big and Steve and “funky spunk”. Until that glorious time, however, SATC will remain an unavoidable presence in our lives, the names Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha as ubiquitous as Starbucks.

This month, in honour of the SATC film, the show’s four stars have taken over our magazine stands, and tedious though their newsstand presence may be, it is nonetheless interesting to see which star graces which cover: Marie Claire, for example, has a double whammy, offering readers a choice of covers — Sarah Jessica Parker, who played the series’s columnising hero Carrie Bradshaw, or Kristin Davis, who was the simpering, immaculate Charlotte. “Are you Carrie or Charlotte?” its cover demands (a choice that frankly strikes me as something like being stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea). Oh, and there’s a pair of free flip-flops for every reader.

Easy Living, a magazine that is one part cashmered indulgence, one part simple-summer-recipes, has also scored Davis; its cover shows her in dangly turquoise earrings and promises that inside the actress “tells all” (in truth she’s telling how she tries to be eco-conscious and that her secret vice is baking).

Meanwhile, in Psychologies, Cynthia Nixon, better known as Miranda, is busy announcing that “I’ve lived my life backwards”. Psychologies, marketed as the brainiac working-woman’s publication, is the logical choice for Miranda, who was SATC’s resident career woman (and she had the short hair and trouser suits to prove it, buddy).

And finally, what of Kim Cattrall, SATC’s resident sexaholic Samantha? Well, Cattrall, at 51 the oldest of the four actors, rocks up on the cover of the over-50s magazine Saga striking a sultry pose beside the headline “The vamp is back”.

And upon reflection it is Cattrall who triumphs here in the newsstand showdown, if only because “The vamp is back” seems a darned sight sexier than “free flip-flops”.