Richard Desmond

Desmond was born in Hampstead, north London, into a Jewish family, the youngest of three children, and was raised in Edgware, in northwest London. His father was descended from Latvian Jews, and his mother was of Ukrainian-Jewish descent. His father, Cyril, was at one time managing director of cinema advertising company Pearl & Dean. An ear infection caused the sudden loss of Cyril's hearing and, according to Richard, he used to take the boy along, when he was no more than three years old, to act as "his ears" in business meetings, where he ostensibly acquired his "first taste of business dealings".

After Cyril lost a significant amount of family money to gambling, his parents divorced, and 11-year-old Desmond moved with his mother, Millie, into a flat above a garage; he has described his impoverished early adolescence as a time when he was "very fat and very lonely". Desmond was educated at Edgware Junior School and Christ's College, Finchley.

Desmond left school at 15 and started working in the classified advertisements section of the Thomson Group, while playing the drums at gigs after a day's work. After moving to another company, he became the advertising manager for the music magazine company Beat Publications, the publisher of Beat Instrumental. Desmond owned two record shops by the time he was 21.

Founding of Northern & Shell

In the mid-1970s, Desmond combined his interest in music and advertising to found publication company Cover Publication with Ray Hammond. Cover Publication launched International Musician and Recording World, a monthly magazine for musicians which expanded to have editions in the UK, US, Australia, Japan and Germany. This was followed by the publication of Home Organist, whose editor contributed the old-school motto Forti Nihil Difficile ("Nothing is difficult for the strong" – it was Benjamin Disraeli's motto), still used by the Northern & Shell group. Desmond eventually bought out Hammond.

In 1979, impressed by Gulf and Western's use of a name which drew association to a larger company, Desmond decided to change the name of Cover Publication to Northern & Shell, Northern for Northern Rock and Shell for Shell Oil.

Desmond was the first investor in the London Docklands, having purchased land for an office space for Northern & Shell for £1 million. Northern & Shell were the first company to move to the area in 1982.

Desmond and Janet Robertson were married for 27 years; the couple have a son, Robert. In October 2010, Janet divorced him and Desmond subsequently married Joy Canfield, a former manager for British Airways, in 2012. Joy was pregnant with Desmond's child when Janet divorced him. The couple have two children; daughter Angel Millie (born 2011) and a son, Valentine (born 2015). Since 2024 he has split his time between London and Dubai.

Desmond's autobiography, The Real Deal: The Autobiography of Britain's Most Controversial Media Mogul, was published in June 2015 by Random House. It was ghost-written by Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend. He also provided his voice for the audiobook version. The autobiography received a five-star review in the Desmond-owned Daily Express.

Charity work

In 2003, Desmond and Roger Daltrey formed the RD Crusaders, a rock group featuring Desmond on drums, to raise money for charitable causes.

Desmond became president of the UK Jewish charity Norwood in 2006. He also donated £2.5m to the £15m children's centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital and his name was attached to it.

In 2000, Desmond donated £100,000 to the Labour Party. Two years later, in a BBC Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman, Tony Blair was asked if it was appropriate to accept the donation due to Desmond's links with the pornography industry, to which Blair replied "if someone is fit and proper to own one of the major national newspaper groups in the country then there is no reason why we would not accept donations from them".

In December 2014, during the run-up to the 2015 United Kingdom general election, Desmond was reported to have agreed to donate £300,000 to the UK Independence Party. There was speculation at the time that a further donation could follow. In April 2015, it was announced that he had given an additional £1 million to the party.