Felix Dennis

I recently found copies of various magazines I edited between 1990 and 2002. Each Sunday for the next few weeks I am posting one of the many interviews I did during that period. Subjects already posted include Tony Benn, Ken Clarke, Michael Winner and Gyles Brandreth. See also Something for the weekend.

On Monday I noted that it was six years to the day since publisher Felix Dennis had died. In the spring of 2001, shortly before the general election that saw New Labour re-elected with another stonking majority, I interviewed Dennis for Freedom Today, The Freedom Association magazine. Once jailed for obscenity, he had gone on to create a publishing empire on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1999 he was Labour’s largest individual benefactor, donating £167,000 to the party. We met at his office in Soho where we talked about Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, a federal Europe, and trees.

Photo: Richard Saker/​Shutterstock

ANYONE FOR DENNIS?

Interviewing Felix Dennis, the 53-year-old publishing tycoon and one of Labour’s most generous supporters, is like playing with an untrained dog: exhilarating, exhausting and ever so slightly dangerous.

Physically he’s a dead ringer for a South American revolutionary. What he’s doing in a smart office in Soho I can’t imagine. He should be under a sombrero, plotting the revolution. Then there’s his voice (not unfriendly but with a definite hint of steel) and the studied, pugnacious delivery. Who would dare argue with this man? Not me, that’s for sure.

A self-proclaimed anarchist, Felix Dennis first hit the headlines at the fag end of the Sixties when he was one of three people charged with obscenity following the publication of allegedly lewd pictures in the ‘alternative’ magazine Oz. Oz, says Dennis, was a product of the sexual revolution of the Sixties and used sexual imagery (ie naked women) to distance itself from what it called ‘straight’ society. (Privately he admits that it also sold copies and was ‘fun to do’.) The trial was a sensation and Dennis was jailed briefly before being acquitted on appeal.

Far from finishing his publishing career, Oz was merely the aperitif and 30 years later Dennis is a multi-millionaire with an empire that includes the flagship title Maxim, a string of computer magazines, and The Week, a modest but much admired compendium of the weekly news.

So great is his wealth that Inland Revenue bills for millions of pounds are said to adorn his kitchen wall. Even more interesting is the fact that last year it was revealed that in 1999 Dennis donated no less than £167,000 to the Labour party and one must assume he has given a lot more over the years.

He does it, he says, not because he believes strongly in the Labour party (he doesn’t) nor because he is a socialist (he isn’t) but because ‘no-one else will’. The fact is that Dennis is one of those people who believes that, because of its traditional business connections, the Conservative party still has a huge advantage over the opposition when it comes to fundraising.

Ideally, he says, he would prefer not to donate anything and is praying for the day when Britain ‘grows up’ and funds political parties from the public purse. ‘The amount of money that should be given to them should reflect the number of votes that they got in the last election. It’s a perfectly simple system and it would work perfectly.’

Until that ‘nirvana’ arrives he will continue to contribute to Labour coffers which is even more remarkable when you consider his views on the present [Tony Blair led] regime.

‘I do not approve of many of the things that Tony Blair has done,’ he tells me, his voice quivering with suppressed anger. ‘I do not approve of his government. I find some of the antics and spin doctoring of the parasites who have attached themselves to the party nauseating. I find the gutlessness that lies behind such spin nauseating.

‘Tony Blair,’ he adds grimly, ‘is a very talented and extremely charming man but I think it’s becoming obvious to everyone that he is a bit of a control freak. The growing power of the prime minister and the dismemberment of parliament should be of enormous concern to anyone who’s even remotely interested in how our lives are governed. If we wish to have a presidential system we should have a presidential system but it’s very foolish to introduce a presidency by stealth.’

[Blair’s] attempt to reform the House of Lords is greeted with particular derision. The argument that peers should inherit their seats is not, Dennis believes, a strong one. ‘However, the thought that it should only be composed of members selected by a presidential-style prime minister is not only obnoxious, it’s more obnoxious because at least inheritance is a lottery.’

The best solution, he says, is to elect our peers at the same time as we elect our MPs. More radically, he would banish political parties from the upper chamber. ‘The House of Lords should be above and beyond party politics. It should be a group of, if you wish, elder statesmen, by which I don’t mean that they have to be 80 years old but they should do the job for the good of the country and give up very powerful careers to do it.’

Dennis also breaks rank with the New Labour elite on the subject of Europe. I have only to mention the dreaded EU and he’s off, denouncing the many rules and regulations produced by ‘totally anonymous’ bureaucrats.

‘We all know that MEPs are utterly powerless little swine who do absolutely nothing in Europe for anybody except spend huge sums of money, vote themselves vastly inflated salaries and perks and help the transportation industry by moving their wretched little parliament every few weeks just so the French don’t have a paddy and throw their toys out of the cot. If these people think that they are actually members of parliament they must be out of their minds. There is no European parliament that’s worth the name.’

Dennis does however believe that the march towards a federal Europe is unstoppable. ‘There is very little we can do about it. I don’t like it, I cannot approve of it, but I realise its inevitability.’ Declaring himself ‘glad’ that he will not live to see the EU’s ‘final conclusion’ he agrees that a federal Europe is one of the greatest dangers facing Europe.

The worst case scenario, he warns, is a United States of Europe ‘which is only in outward appearance a democracy. In all kinds of countries men and women will then rise up. That rising will come and will bring war in its wake.’

There is something almost Churchillian in his tone and I’m beginning to wonder if his generosity to Labour is not some bizarre anarchic joke. After all, is he not the archetypal Thatcherite – a rich, successful entrepreneur full of ideas and not afraid to make others wealthy in his wake? The suggestion appalls him.

Although he accepts that she did ‘many wonderful things’ (helping to tame the print unions, for example), Dennis is adamant that ‘Margaret Thatcher lost my sympathy when she brought this country entirely unnecessarily into a dreadful war in which hundreds, some say thousands, of young men were killed for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than to ensure that she was elected again. It is something for which I will never forgive her.’

The truth is, Felix Dennis has very little time for politicians of any party. ‘I am not a political animal at heart. What attracted me to Oz was its anarchic nature.’ His proudest boast is that Oz introduced words such as ‘ecology’ and ‘conservation’ to the nation’s vocabulary. Today he is so keen on the environment that he intends to eventually sell everything he has (‘apart from one or two million, which to a person like me is absolutely nothing’) and use the money to create a trust that will plant the largest forest in England.

‘I have published magazines because it’s great fun and I adore the business. But I am now doing it for the money. I want the money because I want that forest. I do not do so to benefit my country or the human beings who live in that country. Human beings are pathetic little creatures. I’m doing it for the trees and for no other reason.’

He’s beginning, I tell him, to sound like an ecological David Icke. ‘I don’t care,’ he reposts. ‘Fortunately, in a capitalist society, if you’re lucky enough to earn a lot of money people don’t think you’re barmy. Actually, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people thinking you’re barmy. I’d rather leave the money to the trees. I’ve got to give my money to something. I may even live to see a few million of the trees planted. I certainly hope so.’

So, to sum up: Felix Dennis, one of Labour’s wealthiest supporters and an anarchist at heart, considers the [Labour] prime minister to be ‘decent’ but a ‘control freak’, denounces the ‘dismemberment’ of parliament (by the party he supports), and would rather leave his millions to a forest in the middle of England. Blair’s Britain – you couldn’t make it up.

Postscript: In hindsight this interview barely scratched the surface of Felix Dennis's extraordinary life and his larger than life personality. As it happens, a few months after we met his life took a new twist when he wrote his first poem while in hospital. He subsequently wrote an entire book of verse and launched the first of a series of UK-wide poetry reading tours called ‘Did I Mention the Free Wine?’. In 2006 he wrote a bestseller, ‘How To Get Rich’. In 2007 he sold his US magazine business for a reported $250 million but remained the sole owner of Dennis Publishing, with 50 titles and offices in London and New York. A heavy smoker, he sent me this message before the introduction of the smoking ban: "Forest is fighting for the rights not only for smokers but of non-smokers too when it challenges petty-minded bureaucrats, arrogant ministers and hordes of unelected 'specialists'." In an interview in 2009 he gave himself ten years to live. Sadly he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2012 and died on June 22, 2014, aged 67. He was reported to have left 80 per cent of his fortune to a registered charity he set up that now owns and manages over 3,500 acres of woodlands in Warwickshire. Originally called the Forest of Dennis, the charity was renamed the Heart of England Forest in 2011. On September 20, 2013, nine months before he died, Felix Dennis planted the project’s one millionth tree. In 2018 Dennis Publishing was sold by its trustees with the promise that most of the money – £150 million – would be used to progress the scheme and ultimately create England's largest woodland.