FROM THE ARCHIVES A Look back at some of the people we have featured in the Marshwood Vale Magazine
In a Soho Garden In September 2010 Fergus Byrne met us with Felix Dennis at his London flat
FELIX Dennis doesn’t believe he’s going to live to a ripe old age. It’s something he’s been acutely aware of for a very long time. He is now 63 years old, has had at least three very close brushes with death already, and abused his body to such a degree that there is sometimes debate on whether he has lost, not one decade, but two. As we sit drinking a prelunch rosé in the kitchen of his flat in Soho, he chain smokes and prowls the room like a caged beast, snatching gulps of fresh air from the tiny veranda he likes to call his London garden. “It’s titchy!” he exclaims, as he gazes across the horizon. “It must be the smallest garden in the world”. One imagines his voice booms across the Soho rooftops, disturbing the occupants of tiny bedrooms, where many past tabloid headlines were born. His fear of death is, however, nothing new. In fact it may have been the driving force that saw him rise from growing up in a house with no electricity, no central heating and an outside toilet, to becoming one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs. “I think I’ve gone through my life as an utterly fearful worm, believing that every day is going to be the last day of my life,” he says. “There is no question that I have lived my life, ever since I can remember, in a perpetual state of fear and anxiety, and that is what drives me. But it does something else you know. Because it’s with you continually, all day every day, nothing frightens you. It means that I will do things that other people, far more sensible, will not do.” He remembers how, in his younger days, he would
30 The Marshwood Vale Magazine September - 2 2020 Tel. 01308 423031
earn or save money with dangerous antics—running across canals on sewage pipes to earn ten shillings, or climbing a drainpipe to avoid paying rent. It’s a habit that followed him on through his business life. He cites a recent example of spending $48M “of money that I had already paid tax on!” to make a magazine a success in America. “When I could have just stopped!” he says. Regardless of how long his life has been, or even will be, his list of achievements is quite remarkable. Born in 1947 in Kingston-upon-Thames he never knew his father. With a degree of pride he tells me that his mother worked hard to give himself and his brother a decent life. She was one of the first women to become a chartered accountant, allowing the family to move to a house with electricity. He remembers showing his brother how a light switch worked. Today he has moved his mother into a house near his home and cut back on his travel so he can see more of her—she is 91 and has recently suffered a serious stroke. To the complete dismay, and somewhat annoyance, of his head teacher he passed the 11 plus and went on to grammar school. His teacher told him there had to have been some kind of mix-up in the results, because he was an ‘idle boy’ that couldn’t possibly have passed on his own merits. His teacher wasn’t to be the last person to make the mistake of underestimating him. After spending many years playing in R&B bands and living a hipper than hippy lifestyle he joined the team producing the underground magazine, Oz, and found that his drive to make money could go to good use. While all his colleagues sported Afghan coats and psychedelic shirts, Felix got himself a three-piece suit and went out looking for income for the magazine. “They didn’t know anything about money!” he exclaims. He retained the long hair but his natural negotiation skills and business acumen helped keep the magazine afloat; at least until the now famous ‘Oz trial’ that got him banged up in Wormwood Scrubs. An issue of Oz, produced mostly by contributions from school kids, had resulted in one of the longest conspiracy trials in history. He recorded a single with John Lennon
