Richard Clive Desmond (born 8 December 1951) is an English publisher and businessman. He is the owner of Express Newspapers and founder of Northern & Shell, which publishes various celebrity magazines, such as OK! and New!, and British national newspapers Daily Star and Daily Express. Northern & Shell owned Channel 5 before selling it to US broadcaster Viacom for £463m in May 2014. The company sold its adult television network, Portland, in April 2016.
In 2010, Desmond was ranked the equal-57th richest man in Britain according to The Sunday Times Rich List, with a net worth of £950 million. He was once again listed on the 2011 Sunday Times Rich List, with his fortune still at £950 million. In 2014, he was ranked 78th and worth £1.2 billion. In 2016 Forbes estimated his fortune at close to $1.49 billion, while the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List reported his net worth at £2.25 billion, making him the 48th richest person in Britain.
In 2015, Desmond released his autobiography The Real Deal.
Early life
Desmond was born in Hampstead, London, into a Jewish family, the youngest of three children, and grew up in Edgware, in north west 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 him 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.
| Richard Desmond | |
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Richard Desmond (left) with George Osborne in 2010
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| Born | Richard Clive Desmond 8 December 1951 Hampstead, London, England |
| Residence | Hampstead, London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Publisher, businessman |
| Years active | since 1972 |
| Net worth |  £2.25 billion |
| Television | Television X (1995–2016) Red Hot TV (2000–2016) Channel 5 (2010–2014) |
| Title | Owner of Northern & Shell |
| Term | since 1974 |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | 1 daughter, 2 sons |
| Website | northernandshell |
Richard Desmond Net Worth: Richard Desmond is a British media magnate who has a net worth of $2.5 billion. A self-made billionaire, Mr. Desmond is best known as the owner of UK’s popular network, Channel 5. Born Richard Clive Desmond on December 8, 1954 in London, he dropped out of high-school to work in the classified advertisements section of the Thomson Group. He was twenty when he set up Northern & Shell in 1974. The company evolved over the years and by 1983 it obtained a license to publish Penthouse in the UK. Thanks to his interest in both music and advertising, he even started a magazine called International Musician. In 2000, he got the ownership over the British newspaper group Express, which includes such titles as the Daily and Sunday Express, the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday, as well as the Irish Daily Star. By 1993, the group started to publish the celebrity weekly magazine Ok! Aside from the above titles, Richard Desmond also owned more than 40 adult entertainment publications that he later sold in 2004. It was on July 23, 2010 that he bought Channel5, which airs Dallas, American Idol and Celebrity Big Brother. Since its acquisition, Desmond has made some major changes transforming the board, slimming down staff, moving headquarters and investing in a host of new programming.
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