AS ANYONE who saw last year’s fly-onthe-wall documentary about Carole “two-needles-short-of-an-acupuncture-set” Caplin knows, Tony Blair and his inner circle have acquired some strange friends. Yet few have raised more eyebrows than Richard Desmond, the proprietor of Express Newspapers since 2001.
The problem, of course, was not that Desmond owned a venerable, if sickly, national newspaper, but that he bought the paper, partly at least, with the profits from soft-porn magazines and his soft-porn subscription television channel. This association might have won favour with Philip Larkin, but it is hardly what Tony Blair, in Bea Campbell’s words “a moralising Christian”, is supposed to stand for.
Yet according to Desmond on The Real Richard Desmond (Channel 4), the Prime Minister rang him on the very day the Express deal was clinched, inviting him round for a glass of champagne. The fact that the Government’s decision not to refer the purchase to the Competition Commission was followed by a substantial donation by Desmond to Labour Party funds did not help either. It goes without saying that any suggestion that the two events are in any way connected is indignantly refuted.
I recall that, when questioned by Jeremy Paxman, the Prime Minister affected surprise at the titles in Desmond’s publishing portfolio. Perhaps he was telling the truth, in which case he had been appallingly badly briefed, or deliberately misled. Perhaps he hoped nobody would notice. Perhaps he just didn’t care. There were, after all, more important objectives. As Lance Price, Blair’s deputy press officer at the time, told us, they wanted “a strong newspaper taking on the Daily Mail on its own territory”.
It might have helped to ease the prime ministerial conscience that Desmond does not fit the traditional image of a pornographer, that sickly mixture of overblown adolescent sexual gluttony and stupendously vulgar glamour. He is no Hugh Heffner, Bob Guccione or even David Sullivan, for instance, but, he maintains, a respectable family man and an observant Jew.
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He seems to have acquired the porn like Shakespeare’s Autolycus, snapping up “unconsidered trifles”. His first business venture was a record shop, branching into specialist music titles. One was called — and the title seems an omen of things to come — Home Organist.
He snapped up the chance to become Bob Guccione’s British partner, publishing Penthouse and Forum. When sales declined, he started probing ever-more specialist erotic niches. Titles included Asian Babes, 40 Plus and Blubberly Jubberly, a magazine devoted to plump Eskimo bus-pass holders. OK, I made the last one up, but you get the idea.
Family man Desmond seems to have taken a hands-on interest in the content of his publications, attending editorial meetings and vetting every cover. According to a former managing editor of Fantasy “his particular favourites were blond women with large breasts”.
When his parents split, he was raised in genteel poverty by his mother. He was not, apparently, popular at school and left without qualifications to pursue his love of rock music. He describes himself as driven by ambition. Former colleagues describe him as a bully, but what tycoon isn’t, apart from Richard Branson and his famous rictus grin? One schoolmate claimed that he used to extort dinner money from other boys. This is actually a serious accusation, which Desmond deflected. “It’s all folklore, isn’t it?” he said ambiguously. “If it creates a bit of fun, then that’s fine.”
And the discrepancy between respectable family life and tacky porn? Family is family and business is business, it seems, and, like the Victorian mill-owners of yore, Desmond keeps them well separated. In the end, the most depressing thing about this profile, to which Desmond had given free access, was the sense that, as long as he was making money, he simply didn’t care. That may be a worse stain-by-association on the Prime Minister than getting a cut from African Hot-‘n’-Totties or what have you.
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On the subject of morally questionable entertainment, Young, Posh and Loaded (ITV1) remains both a hoot and desperately sad. Two of last week’s crop of bright young things just about fitted into the man on the Clapham sofa’s definition of “posh”. But the third was nouveau riche and about as classy as the artist formally known as “Posh Spice”.
This week the balance was levelled further, as we met Raj Sharma, a young Asian business prodigy who has bought both a title and the Chigwell mansion of — wait for it — the porn baron, David Sullivan. The decor displays vulgarity on an epic scale, stuck in a Seventies disco-era time-warp. English Heritage must slap a preservation order on it without delay.
Back at home, Sharma described his obsessive commitment to maintaining the highest standards in everything. “If you are going to put a can of baked beans down, it doesn’t take any longer to have the label showing,” he explained before settling down to a lonely meal of microwaved shepherd’s pie.
Meanwhile, the serious money was over on the fascinating Highest Bidder (BBC Two) chasing a sports car called, if I heard correctly, a Ferrari Testosterone. But you can have too many millionaires and male hormones in one night.