Is Graydon Carter getting cocky? Riding an 18-month hot streak at the newsstand, the Vanity Fair editor in chief has made a surprising choice for his November cover: comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Sources say VF fashion director Michael Roberts recently shot the chameleonic British comic, who's far better known by his alter egos from Da Ali G Show, and mock-ups of the cover have been spotted around the mag's offices at 4 Times Square.

Cohen's film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, hits theaters in November, and the advance buzz is already deafening, thanks in large measure to Kazakh officials' adorable attempts to protest the movie to the U.S. government.

But while putting Cohen on the cover would earn Carter a big thumbs-up at Radar and other places where sister-fucking-jokes are appreciated, will it sell? One consumer magazine expert who knows the market has doubts: "I can't imagine the typical person in Omaha—who Vanity Fair needs to reach in order to have a big-selling issue—is going to know about Borat. But maybe I'm wrong." (Which is why, one source speculates, it won't be shocking if Cohen's co-star, Pamela Anderson, is recruited for a last-minute cameo.)

Then there's the question of exactly who will be featured in the story. Cohen almost never grants interviews, except in the persona of one of his three Ali G Show characters; an August 2004 VF profile by Jim Windolf, in fact, was one of the few times Cohen has been interviewed as himself. A VF insider predicts the cover will feature Cohen in the trademark '70s mustache and sack suit of Borat Sagdiyev, the Kazakh tour guide whose tales of wife-beating and Jew-tossing have been such a source of angst for the former Soviet state that it's hired a PR firm to do damage control. "He'd never sell on newsstands if he was out of character," adds the insider.

Even if he cries, admits he's bulimic, or says he was molested as a child?