Desmond - The real deal : the autobiography of Britains most controversial media mogul

CONTENTS

From the age of five, when he helped his deaf father negotiate advertising contracts, Richard Desmond has always had an eye for business. In The Real Deal he offers a no-holds-barred account of an extraordinary career that has taken him from cloakroom attendant at a north London club to billionaire media owner. En route he tells of his early life as a rock and roll drummer, his first steps in the world of magazine publishing as a purveyor of leisure and top-shelf titles, and finally, after decades of paying his dues building smaller brands, his arrival in the big league with the launch of OK! magazine and the acquisition of Express Newspapers, his purchase and sale of Channel 5, and his 80 million investment in the Health Lottery, combining business innovation with help for good causes.

Along the way, he imparts many of the secrets of his astounding success, as well as giving his forthright opinion (and he always has one) on such diverse subjects as politicians, religion, and the similarities between being a rock and roll drummer and running a business as well as his views on a cast of characters ranging from Alan Sugar to Victoria Beckham and from Simon Cowell to Jennifer Aniston.

Often controversial, frequently revelatory, always entertaining, The Real Deal is the brilliantly frank account of a life spent at the sharp end.

Richard Desmond is the founder and owner of Northern & Shell Plc, publishers of the Express Newspapers group as well as the celebrity magazines OK!, New! and Star. He is also the drummer for The RD Crusaders, a rock supergroup formed with The Whos Roger Daltrey, whose charity concerts have raised some 15 million. He lives in north London with his wife, Joy, and has three children: adult son Robert who is a software developer and leading Holocaust memorial activist, daughter Angel, 4; and son Valentine, who was born in January 2015. He is currently working on a major new regeneration project in Londons Docklands.

The author is donating all royalties in full from this book to The Desmond Foundation, which supports charities seeking to relieve poverty and sickness, particularly among children.

To my parents, without whom I would not have been here, to my dear Joy, without whom I would not want to be here, and to Angel Millie the most beautiful daughter in the world, Valentine the worlds best little son and Robert the worlds best big son.

My advice to friends over the last year has been: when you get to the age of 62 spend some time getting your life down on paper. It will jog your memory about all sorts of things you had forgotten, and give you the opportunity to swap reminiscences with people whove played a key part in your life. It will also help you understand yourself a bit better. In my case, it has the additional advantage that in future, instead of endlessly retelling the tales of my early days in business, I can simply give people page numbers. Whats more I now have a record for my children and their children of my history and the family history, and my son Robert will have something to remind him that our immigrant grandparents were not buried in Ukraine, as he seemed to think, but Streatham.

I want to thank about a thousand people for helping me with this project but most directly Paul Ashford who has been with me for most of my working life and Martin Townsend who has been with me for many of the most exciting bits, both of whom after all this time are able to finish my sentences for me. Id also like to thank my publishers Nigel and Gail for their input and their enormous cheques which will go to my charity foundation to help the needy.

In fact my wife and my board directors are thankful, too, because this account was put together during the time I was waiting for EU approval of my Channel 5 deal, so it did something to distract me from driving everyone mad a hundred times a day asking when I would have the cheque. Instead, I only drove them mad fifty times a day. That sale was, for me, the defining deal of a lifetime in business and the first time I felt secure in financial terms and accepted it was now unlikely I would end up on a park bench. It was the achievement that helped make sense of everything that had gone before, and it helped set up my next business ventures. Meanwhile my wife Joy was pregnant for the second time, so I felt I could now rely on at least four readers: herself, my daughter Angel and new son Valentine, plus grown-up son Robert. And as I write now five, God willing, because Robert and his partner Basia are expecting their own child which will make me amazingly a grandfather.

So already in 2015 my future isnt the same as I thought it would be in 2014. Meanwhile, business-wise, the media is being transformed by big digital players and the trend for programmatic selling which means the whole process is conducted by computers and databases. Its all very different from when I started out. Still, if any would-be Richard Desmond in the digital generation or indeed any generation can take something from this book and apply it to their business or their life, that will make me happy. In fact, despite all the changes that are going on, I strongly suspect that the basics of business will remain as they always have been.

I have a strong suspicion that a third of my readers will like me and my story, a third will hate me, and a third wont care at all. Well, I should thank the first third for their support and the other two-thirds for making me try harder and Id also like to thank all the great one-off characters who appear in this book for making my life more interesting and more colourful.

Enjoy, be happy, and be lucky.

Richard Desmond

London, April 2015

I do not notice the motion of the hospital trolley. I expect this is an effect of the drugs that have been administered to prepare me for the operation that I hope will save my sight.

As my consciousness starts to fade I notice I am wearing a name tag on my wrist. The thought occurs to me that I am being taken to play another concert, like those I have done with Roger Daltrey, Robert Plant and Greg Lake. I hope the bass drum pedal will be OK and will not collapse when I put my foot on it.

Then I hear a voice that I know comes from within my head, even though it appears to originate among my surroundings at the hospital, somewhere just out of sight.

So, you idiot, youve worked 18 hours a day and seven days a week. Youve ignored most things other than getting to where youve got. I hope youre pleased with yourself.

I do not quite know how to answer this, but as I search for a suitable response the image of my workplace comes into my head. The voice persists: Do you like your office overlooking the Thames at the Tower?

Well, yes, I would say its the best office in London.

And your newspapers and your magazines and your privileges and going to Downing Street to see the Prime Minister?

Yes.

Well, youd better decide whether its all been worth it.

What do you mean?

Youd better decide whether all your material achievements are really the most important things in life, and if theyre not, just exactly what youre going to treat as your priorities from now on

The voice appears intent on teaching me some kind of lesson, and I suddenly feel I am about to face the toughest choice of a career which has had its share of tough choices. But before I can answer, the drugs take their full effect, and I know nothing more until I awake surrounded by my medical team at Moorfields Eye Hospital, and am told the procedure has been a success.