Sir Ray Tindle: I started a media empire with £300

Sir Ray Tindle started his newspaper business with the Balham and Tooting Gazette, circulation 700. Now his Tindle Newspaper Group owns over 200 titles around the UK.

It's no surprise that 'Noli Cedere' 'No Surrender' is the Tindle family motto. Sir Ray Tindle, 82, has been fighting gutsy battles his whole life. First he fought the Japanese in World War II, and more recently a debilitating throat cancer, which claimed his voice box. "I was a great fan of Winston Churchill," says the founder of Tindle Newspapers. "Everybody thought that we didn't have much of a chance in World War II. And he told us we did. He turned the whole country around."

A captain in the Devonshire Regiment, he printed his first newspaper, using a photocopier, on a troopship off Malaya in 1944. He interviewed the men: "they all had a story. And I wrote them, churned them out and put them on the decks." Back in London, and turned down for jobs on Fleet Street, Tindle joined the Croydon Times, before going on to buy his first newspaper in 1960 with his £300 in demob money. "I could only afford one that was either dead or dying. But that was better than starting from scratch." With £250, he snapped up the Balham and Tooting Gazette, which at the time was selling about 700 copies and "in a pretty poor state".

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Jody Clarke

Jody studied at the University of Limerick and was a senior writer for MoneyWeek. Jody is experienced in interviewing, for example digging into the lives of an ex-M15 agent and quirky business owners who have made millions. Jody’s other areas of expertise include advice on funds, stocks and house prices.