Richard Desmond

English publisher and businessman (born 1951)
the ice hockey player

Desmond left school at 15 and started working in the classified advertisements section of the Thomson Group, while playing the drums at gigs after a day's work. Desmond owned two record shops by the time he was 21. In the mid 1970s, Desmond combined his interest in music and advertising to found, with Ray Hammond, International Musician and Recording World, a monthly magazine for musicians which expanded to have editions in the UK, US, Australia, Japan and Germany. The company soon began to publish a range of pornographic magazines itself including Asian Babes, Readers Wives and Barely Legal, numbering 45 such titles in all when they were eventually sold. During the 1980s, Desmond ran a premium rate phone sex company until 1988 when he sold the business after British Telecom raised concerns about the content. Desmond's Northern & Shell launched The Fantasy Channel in 1995. It was one of the first pornographic channels available on satellite television in the UK, competing against other channels available on cable. The channel was later rebranded as Television X. By 2003, Desmond's company had expanded to broadcasting seven channels, with plans to launch six more and the business was described as "extremely lucrative", generating £17m of the £60m operating profits of Northern & Shell. A website, fantasy121. com, was also launched. Desmond put the magazines up for sale in 2001 in an attempt to distance himself from pornography He said in 2003 in a television programme, The Real Richard Desmond (Channel 4): "Would it be better to be a former pornographer rather than a pornographer? I'm probably being more honest by keeping them. They serve a need." In February 2004, in a move that some media outlets interpreted as an attempt to improve his image in view of his bid for The Daily Telegraph. Desmond sold the pornographic magazine business to Remnant Media for approximately £10 million. Desmond was apparently "wounded" by references to himself as a pornographer. to which Blair replied "if someone is fit and proper to own one of the major national newspaper groups in the country then there is no reason why we would not accept donations from them". Northern & Shell's business interests in pornography ended in April 2016 when Portland Television, established in 1995, the broadcaster of Television X and the Red Hot channels, was sold for under £1 million in a management buyout. Desmond has often been referred to as "Richard 'Dirty' Desmond", or "Dirty Des", in Private Eye magazine due to Northern & Shell formerly owning pornographic magazines and television channels.

According to The Guardian, Desmond had made a deal in 1991 with Norman Chanes for running advertisements in his pornographic magazines for telephone sex lines run by Chanes' mafia associate, Richard Martino of the Gambino crime family. According to the BBC, Martino was "widely reported" to be linked to the mafia, but Desmond did not know. The deal reportedly left the Americans out of pocket and after Desmond refused to pay compensation, his employee was kidnapped and assaulted in New York. Desmond called this account "a fantasy", but encouraged his employee to report the incident to the police and hire a bodyguard to protect himself. In February 2005, The Guardian reported that the claim Desmond had received death threats from the New York Gambino mafia family was contained in affidavits from FBI agents released during Martino's trial relating to the fraudulent use of the telephone lines. enlarging the group to include the Daily and Sunday Express titles, the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday (which Desmond started), and the Irish Daily Star (owned jointly with the Irish Independent News & Media group). The Daily and Sunday Express each sell around 700,000 copies per issue. The Daily Star was the only national paper to increase sales year on year with an 18% increase from September 2008 to September 2009, and circulation figures of around 850,000, largely due to aggressive pricing policies which significantly undercut competitors such as The Sun. After buying Express Newspapers, Desmond became embroiled in a feud with Viscount Rothermere, publisher of the Daily Mail, the rival to the Daily Express, largely derived from stories relating to Rothermere's private life. Commenting at the Leveson Inquiry in January 2012, Desmond said: "There has been speculation that Diana was killed by the royal family The speculation has gone on and on. I don't know the answer." The Times reported his newspapers had repeatedly published such claims. For its defamatory articles covering the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, which numbered a hundred, the Express paid damages of £550,000 to the toddler's parents in 2008. However, in his appearance at the Leveson Inquiry, Desmond said the Express had been "scapegoated" by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC),

In April 2004, the Daily Express reverted to supporting the Conservatives, after a period backing Labour. On the same day, Desmond attacked The Daily Telegraph (with which he was a joint venture partner in the West Ferry newspaper printing plant), then considering accepting a takeover by the German Axel Springer group, and asked if they were keen on being run by Nazis. According to Desmond, in an exchange at the meeting, all Germans are Nazis. Desmond reportedly harangued The Daily Telegraph chief executive and associates in faux German at a business meeting and imitated Adolf Hitler. The Telegraph executives walked out of the meeting. This incident was described as a form of institutionalised racism prevalent among newspaper proprietors. Previously, in August 2001, the National Union of Journalists' chapel at the Express & Star also condemned Desmond for the newspaper's "hysterical and racist" campaign against asylum seekers;

In August 2005, the former Daily Express executive editor Ted Young made an out of court settlement with Desmond's company ahead of an industrial tribunal. This related to an incident with Desmond in the newsroom in September 2004, during which Desmond was said to have hit the journalist. Desmond has repeatedly denied the claims. In 2008, Northern & Shell reported a turnover of £483.9 million.

Litigation began at the High Court on 6 July 2009 over claims in journalist Tom Bower's joint biography of Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel, Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, that Desmond had made a "humiliating climbdown" over an Express story at the end of 2002 on the state of Lord Black's finances, which it was alleged Desmond had ordered to be written. This claim of a weakening of Desmond's "super tough" reputation as a businessman was viewed as defamation by Desmond. Bower denied libel on the grounds of the story being "substantially true". The following day, the presiding judge The Hon. Mr Justice Eady, discharged the jury as "fundamental" evidence and legal submissions had emerged. The new jury later found in favour of Bower. A biography of Desmond, titled Rough Trader, was written by Bower and printed in 2006 but still awaits publication.

In July 2010, Desmond bought the UK terrestrial television channel Channel 5, which was losing money, from RTL Group, for £103.5 million. "Never before", wrote Tom Bower in The Guardian at the time, "has a government regulator (Ofcom) lowered the threshold for the suitability of the prospective owner of a TV channel enough for someone like Desmond to control a potentially lucrative franchise". In the year before Desmond acquired Channel 5, it had made a total loss of €41m (£37m), or a €9m loss at an operating level. The new owner immediately proceeded to cut costs, starting with the dismissal of seven of Channel 5's nine directors, beginning a drive to eliminate "£20m of yearly expenses". The stated plan included the dismissal of up to 80 of the network's 300 employees. Desmond also significantly increased the programming budget. In the first full year of Desmond's ownership, the broadcaster saw a 28% surge in revenue the biggest TV advertising haul in its 14 year history "thanks to factors including the arrival of Big Brother and the return of a major media buying contract with Aegis". He sold Channel 5 to Viacom for £463m in May 2014. By December 2010, his privately owned publishing venture employed more than 2,000 people internationally, according to Desmond. with a net worth of £950 million. In 2014, he was ranked 78th and worth £1.2 billion. In 2016, Forbes estimated his fortune at close to $1.49 billion, while the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List reported his net worth at £2.25 billion. According to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2019, Desmond has a net worth of £2.6 billion, falling to £2 billion in 2020. Express Newspapers was sold to Reach plc (formerly Trinity Mirror) in 2018 for £200 million, of which £74 million was invested in the Express newspapers pension scheme until 2027. In 2020, Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, accepted that his approval of a £1 billion luxury housing development on Westferry Road, Isle of Dogs, proposed by Desmond, had been unlawful. Desmond sent Jenrick a text message after meeting him at a fundraising dinner stating "We don't want to give Marxists loads of doe [sic] for nothing!" referring to money which would be owed to Tower Hamlets Council to pay for infrastructure improvements. Jenrick's approval, which was against the advice of the planning inspector, met a deadline which would have saved Desmond £40m. Additionally, the scheme proposed by Desmond only provided 21% affordable housing compared to the minimum target of 35%, which Tower Hamlets Council estimate would have saved Desmond up to £106m. Desmond, whose company had donated to the Conservative Party in 2017, The Conservative Party Chairman subsequently apologised to members of the 1922 Committee for having allowed Desmond to sit next to Jenrick and allowing Desmond to lobby him.

In 2003, Desmond and Roger Daltrey formed the RD Crusaders, a rock group featuring Desmond on drums, to raise money for charitable causes. Desmond became president of the UK Jewish charity Norwood in 2006. He also donated £2.5m to the £15m children's centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital and his name was attached to it.

In December 2014, during the run up to the 2015 United Kingdom general election, Desmond was reported to have agreed to donate £300,000 to the UK Independence Party. There was speculation at the time that a further donation could follow.

In October 2011, Desmond's company Northern and Shell launched the Health Lottery, of which around 20% of turnover goes to charity. The grants, distributed by the People's Health Trust (PHT), help many good causes and the elderly in local communities across the UK. It supports local health causes throughout England, Scotland and Wales. The Health Lottery was to return 20.34p per £1 lottery ticket to good causes, which was compared unfavourably with the National Lottery donating 28p per £1 ticket. Sir Stephen Bubb, then chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, accused Desmond of "profiteering on the back of charities". In July 2020, it was announced that the proceeds given to charity was to increase to 25%. In November 2019, Desmond announced his intention to bid for the National Lottery licence when it came up for renewal at the end of the year.

Desmond and Janet Robertson were married for 27 years; the couple have a son, Robert. Joy was pregnant with Desmond's child when Janet divorced him. The couple have two children; daughter Angel Millie (born 2011) and a son, Valentine (born 2015). The tycoon's autobiography, The Real Deal: The Autobiography of Britain's Most Controversial Media Mogul, was published in June 2015 by Random House. It was ghost written by Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend. He also provided his voice for the audiobook version. The autobiography received a five star review in the Desmond owned Daily Express.