The
disquiet subsequently deepened when it emerged he
had donated £100,000 to Labour Party coffers
eight days later.
Sydney, Australia, Thursday, April 29,
2004Porn king's
antics lose friends By Jonathan
Este ON
Fleet Street they call him "Dirty" Desmond. He's
the pornographer turned press baron who owns the
Express newspaper group and OK! magazine and
until recently was considered a player for the
takeover of the Telegraph Group. But since his performance late last week, when
he treated Telegraph executives to a tirade
of abuse, culminating in he and his executives
singing Deutschland Uber Alles while he
goosestepped around the office, Basil Fawlty-style,
giving the Nazi salute, he is fast being given the
soubriquet, "Deranged" Desmond. No one has quite fathomed what prompted the
outburst, which happened last Thursday when
Richard Desmond and a group of his senior
executives were in a meeting with Telegraph
chief executive Jeremy Deedes and a group of
his senior managers. Asked by BBC Radio about Desmond's reported
description of him as a "miserable piece of
excrement," Deedes said: "I would say it was a bit
stronger than that -- I do not think there was a
swear word in the English language that wasn't used
at any stage." Desmond
is said to be stung at the failure of his £500
million ($1.22 billion) bid to buy the Telegraph
Group, which has been in play since the present
owner, Hollinger International, became embroiled in
financial strife surrounding the business dealings
of its major shareholder, Conrad Black. The
most likely buyer at present is thought to be
Berlin-based newspaper group, Axel Springer
(owner of Bild newspaper). This is what is
thought to have prompted Desmond to ask the
Telegraph executives, according to Deedes:
"How did we fancy being taken over by a lot of
effing Nazis." "It became quite clear after a few minutes that
this was not going to be a productive meeting and,
after taking a four-minute volley of abuse, which
included an offer from Mr Desmond that I should
step outside, I suggested that the moment had come
for us to leave." Which was when Desmond launched
into his Hitler impression. Desmond made his money in a magazine empire
whose titles included Asian Babes, Big Ones
and Readers' Wives. He had immediate, and
considerable, success with the launch in 1993 of
OK! magazine, a shameless copy of
lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous bible,
Hello!, which rode the British obsession
with celebrity and overtook Hello! within
seven years. At about the same time, with the backing,
ironically, of German-based Commerzbank, he bought
the Express titles, which included the
Daily Express and Sunday Express and
the Daily Star for a reported £125
million. While the Express has struggled in
the fiercely competitive British market, the
Star and Daily Star Sunday, which he
launched, have been among the best performers in
the past year bucking the downward trend in
readership. Given his background there was considerable
disquiet among Labour backbenchers when Desmond was
given the go-ahead to buy the Express Group by
Trade and Industry Secretary Stephen Byers
in early 2001. The disquiet subsequently deepened
when it emerged he had donated £100,000 to
Labour Party coffers eight days later. This
disquiet turned to hilarity with last Friday's
shenanigans. Just 24 hours earlier, Desmond's
papers announced on front pages and in editorials
they were switching their political allegiances to
the Tory Party. Desmond had famously shouted at Tory leader,
Michael Howard, at a private lunch last year
that: "The problem with the f---ing Tories is that
you're f---ing f---ed." Given their owner's lack of
control, the support of Desmond's papers is
unlikely to do much to alleviate that
problem. -
Richard Desmond
calls Daily Telegraph Nazi, brands Telegraph
chief executive Jeremy Deedes a 'miserable piece
of shit' and said Germans were 'all
Nazis'
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