Richard Desmond: porn magnate adds TV channel to his empire

Richard Desmond, the Daily Express proprietor and publisher of Asian Babes and Readers' Wives, has added a television channel to his portfolio with his £104m acquisition of Five.

His detractors paint him as a boorish idiot who got lucky. But Richard Desmond's business acumen is in little doubt. Having amassed a personal fortune of £950m enough to put him 44th on last year's Sunday Times Rich List the Daily Express proprietor added a television channel to his portfolio last week with his £104m acquisition of Five. Sources close to the pornography tycoon claim this is just the start, say James Robinson and Maggie Brown in The Guardian. As he closed in on the deal last Friday, he allegedly led his board in a rendition of the Carpenters' classic, We've Only Just Begun.

Desmond, now 59, was never academically inclined and recalls being 'very fat, very young and very lonely' at his grammar school in Finchley. He started working at a local jazz club as a coat-checker when he was 13 and left school at 14 when he talked himself into a job flogging classified advertisements at Thomson Newspapers. By the age of 21 he owned his own house, a couple of record shops and some property. In 1974, he set up Northern & Shell and launched his first magazine, International Musician. It was a hit.

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