Richard Desmond Biography
Richard Desmond is a businessman, publisher, and former pornographer from the United Kingdom. Desmond was the 107th richest person in the United Kingdom, according to the 2021 Sunday Times Rich List.
How old is Richard Desmond? – Age
He is 71 years old as of 8 December 2022. He was born in 1951 in Hampstead, London, United Kingdom. His real name is Richard Clive Desmond.
Richard Desmond Family – Education
Desmond was the youngest of three children born into a Jewish household and lived in Edgware, northwest London. His father was of Latvian Jewish ancestry, while his mother was of Ukrainian-Jewish ancestry. His father, Cyril, was the managing director of the movie advertising firm Pearl & Dean. Cyril’s hearing was suddenly lost due to an ear infection, and Richard recalls taking him along as “his ears” in business meetings when he was no more than three years old, when he reportedly had his “first taste of business dealings.” Desmond was 11 years old when his parents split after Cyril lost a considerable sum of family money to gambling; he has described his destitute early adolescence as a time when he was “very fat and very lonely.” Desmond went to Edgware Junior School and Christ’s College, Finchley for his education.
Richard Desmond Wife – Children
Desmond and Janet Robertson have been married for 27 years and have one son, Robert. Janet divorced him in October 2010, and Desmond married Joy Canfield, a former British Airways manager, in 2012. When Janet divorced Desmond, Joy was pregnant with his kid. The couple has two children: Angel Millie, born in 2011, and Valentine, born in 2015.
Richard Desmond Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of 1.2 billion USD.
Richard Desmond House
In May 2019, the now-67-year-old owns a property on The Bishops Avenue, London’s Billionaires Row, and is reported to be worth $1 billion. Desmond resides in Dane Court, one of the 66 properties on the avenue.
Desmond owns Northern & Shell, a former media behemoth that published the UK’s Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers until their sale in 2018. Desmond shifted his company’s focus from media to property and gambling after selling Britain’s Channel 5 TV station, his newspapers, and celebrity magazines like OK! and New.
Desmond paid £9.2 million ($14 million) for Dane Court, a neo-Jacobean palace, in 2004. It is one of 40% of the mansions on the road that is registered to a named individual rather than a shell corporation. The dilapidated Kenmore property rots away on the right side of the property behind sliding gates, while the gleaming Jersey House, replete with safe room, sold for £34 million ($44 million) in December 2015.
Richard Desmond Books
Random House published the tycoon’s autobiography, The Real Deal: The Autobiography of Britain’s Most Controversial Media Mogul, in June 2015. Martin Townsend, the Sunday Express’s editor, ghostwrote it. He also delivered the audiobook edition with his voice. The Desmond-owned Daily Express gave the autobiography five stars.
Richard Desmond Channel 5
Desmond paid £103.5 million to RTL Group in July 2010 for the UK terrestrial-television channel Channel 5, which was losing money. “Never before has a government regulator (Ofcom) lowered the threshold for the suitability of a prospective owner of a TV channel enough for someone like Desmond to control a potentially lucrative franchise,” noted Tom Bower in The Guardian at the time.
In the fiscal year preceding Desmond’s acquisition of Channel 5, the company lost €41 million (£37 million), or €9 million on an operating basis. The new owner quickly began cutting costs, beginning with the firing of seven of Channel 5’s nine directors, as part of a push to save “£20 million in annual expenses.” According to the claimed proposal, up to 80 of the network’s 300 staff will be let go. Desmond also upped the programming budget dramatically. The broadcaster saw a 28% increase in revenue in its first full year under Desmond’s control, the largest TV advertising haul in its 14-year history, “thanks to factors such as the arrival of Big Brother and the return of a major media buying contract with Aegis.” In May 2014, he sold Channel 5 to Viacom for £463 million.
Richard Desmond Express Newspapers
Northern & Shell paid £125 million for Express Newspapers from United News & Media in November 2000, expanding the firm to encompass the Daily and Sunday Express titles, the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday (which Desmond founded), and the Irish Daily Star. The Daily Star was the only national newspaper to see a year-on-year gain in sales, with an 18% increase from September 2008 to September 2009 and circulation estimates of over 850,000. Desmond became entangled in a rivalry with Viscount Rothermere, publisher of the Daily Mail, after purchasing Express Newspapers, which was largely fueled by reports about Rothermere’s personal life.
He was accused of using the Express to spread racist beliefs and of publishing “apparently repetitive coverage of immigration, freak weather events, and theories about Diana, Princess of Wales’s death.” The Express was referred to as having “apparently repetitive coverage of immigration, freak weather events, and theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales” by the Financial Times in 2014.
Desmond stated in 2015 that he lamented the Express’s coverage of McCann’s disappearance, but that he did not regret it. The Daily Express returned to backing the Conservatives in April 2004, and Desmond attacked The Daily Telegraph on the same day, which was considering accepting an acquisition by the German Axel Springer group.
During a business meeting, Desmond allegedly harangued The Daily Telegraph’s chief executive and associates in faux German and mocked Adolf Hitler. This episode was described as an example of institutionalized racism among newspaper owners. Ted Young, the former executive editor of the Daily Express, reached an out-of-court deal with Desmond’s company in August 2005, ahead of an industrial tribunal. Desmond has consistently refuted the allegations. Northern & Shell recorded a £483.9 million profit in 2008.