A billionaire bon viveur who kept 14 mistresses. But was Felix Dennis also a murderer?
As publishing tycoon jailed for obscenity after the infamous Oz trial dies . . .
No one can say that publishing magnate Felix Dennis didn’t enjoy his millions or live up to his wildman reputation. Chubby and bespectacled, he was the antithesis of the cautious billionaire forever worrying about the size and safety of his fortune.
Dennis enjoyed boasting that he’d spent around £100 million on ‘sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll’ — especially drugs, mainly crack cocaine.
His philosophy was startlingly simple: ‘To have a bloody good time filling the gap between being born and dying.’
Scores — perhaps hundreds — of women can testify to the enthusiasm he put into that quest, keeping a stable of up to 14 mistresses and sometimes romping with up to five of them at a time.
It was perhaps because he’d been born into near poverty or, as an adult, that he’d had the unusual experience of having his intelligence questioned by an old Bailey judge, that he got a particular thrill out of people talking about his £750 million success.
Well, Dennis can rest easy. People will certainly go on talking about him, if only because in a life that was otherwise an open book, his death from cancer at the age of 67 leaves one huge question unanswered — was he a murderer?
The one-time hippy who left school in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, without any o-levels, but found he was a genius at spotting gaps in the magazine market, died without shedding any further light on his extraordinary claim that he had killed a man.
He made it to a newspaper interviewer in 2008. The ‘confession’ came towards the end of a wide-ranging talk at his Warwickshire mansion during which he drank several bottles of red wine and inevitably talked about women, including the fact — as he often repeated — that he’d never married because he could never be monogamous.
Had he, the interviewer asked him, ever fought with a man over a woman? He looked at her and replied: ‘I’ve killed a man. I killed him. That’s all you need to know. He hurt her and I told him to stop and he kept on. He hurt her. She told him to stop. I told him to stop. Wouldn’t stop. Went on and on. Made her life a living misery; beat her up, beat up her kids, wouldn’t let her alone, kept on, kept on — weren’t even his kids, so in the end I had a little meeting with him, pushed him over the edge of a cliff. Weren’t ’ ard.’
It happened, he added, around 25 years earlier, which would have put it at around 1983. The next day, he sent the journalist a note asking her to ‘forget one particular episode’ and l ater described what he’d said about killing a man as ‘a load of hogwash — I was drunk. I withdraw it’.
The quotes duly appeared, together with his retraction, but with no named victim and no obvious missing person, the police took no action.
THIS ‘confession’ might have been the episode for which he was most f amous, but f or t he legendary oz obscenity trial in 1971, which hung around him for the rest of his life. oz was an underground satirical magazine which Dennis — after a spell in art college — published with Richard neville and James Anderson. Issues often had outside contributors — one was edited by homosexuals, another by Women’s Lib.
Accused of being out of touch with the young, Dennis and his partners invited ‘school kids’ to edit an issue. one piece was a parody of Rupert Bear, with the head of Rupert pasted onto the main character of an X-rated cartoon.
enter the obscene Publications Squad. The publishers were defended by Rumpole of The Bailey author John Mortimer. John Lennon and Yoko marched in protest at their prosecution and raised money for the defence.
The trio were found not guilty of conspiracy to corrupt public morals, but guilty of lesser charges. neville and Anderson were sentenced to 15 months. Dennis was given slightly less because, as Judge Michael Argyle explained, he was ‘very much less intelligent’ and therefore less culpable.
The three had their long hair cut by the barber in Wormwood Scrubs, while John Lennon lead another march to free ‘The oz Three’.
They were in prison for two weeks before being released on appeal, which they won. But Dennis never forgot his time in jail with ‘ hard men’, who mistakenly thought the oz trial had something to do with the trio interfering with children.
Dennis would joke about the judge’s observation about his intelligence, but it rankled. And it made him determined to be a winner.
Two years later he founded Dennis Publishing and immediately his instincts began paying dividends. Computer magazines, Kung Fu Monthly, Auto express and others had riches cascading onto the boy whose childhood home didn’t have an indoor lavatory or bathroom.
Dennis bought houses in Warwickshire, London, new York and Connecticut. He had no fewer than three estates in Mustique (one of which used to belong to David Bowie), where he spent half the year and where his employees were welcome to take holidays. He owned two Rolls- Royces and various other exotic cars and yet he never learned to drive. A private jet was always on standby.
At his estate near Stratford-upon-Avon, he kept a retinue of more than 50 staff, two of whom looked after his ‘legendary’ wine cellar.
Also there, living quietly on the estate, was his mother Dorothy, now 94, of whom he always spoke with immense pride, especially describing how, after his father left when Dennis was three, she went to night classes in order to become a chartered accountant.
But now that he was rich, nothing was allowed to stand in the way of his pursuit of pleasure. A friend calling on him just a few years ago found him, in slacks and a tasteless floral shirt, with around a dozen women in various states of undress quite unself-consciously wandering around the mansion.
They could be found in the drawing room, watching TV, in the kitchen, doing odd jobs or just being decorative.
Dennis reeled off some of their names ( and one of them, he disclosed, was married).
They included Francesca, with Chinese l ooks but a Cockney accent; Sachie, from somewhere in Asia with a public school accent; nirangela from Sri Lanka; Gael from France; Sharon and Melanie presumably f r om t he Home Counties; and Suzen from Japan. Then there was Frenchwoman Marie-France Demolis.
‘Yes, I do have sexual relationships with all of them,’ declared Dennis. ‘And, of course, they all know about each other. I’ve created a different type of family.
‘When they’re all around, there’s only one rule: I won’t put up with jealousy. There are no other rules.
‘I can take ten, 15, 20 million dollars, place it on black on the roulette wheel and not lose a moment’s sleep if I lose. But the thought of waking up every day in bed with the same woman horrifies me.
‘That’s why I’ve never married. I am not monogamous by nature and I can’t be any other way. That’s why I don’t have any children.’
All his women, he said, knew he would never marry them and that they were free to leave him whenever they wished.
FoR years, he said, apart from expanding his business, he did ‘almost nothing but have sex, take vast quantities of drugs and feel absolutely fantastic’. The drug was crack cocaine, but he gave up in 1997. He quit without help, he declared, ‘because I have exceptional will-power’.
But in recent years the women had been — a trifle unexpectedly — superseded by the more spiritual pleasures of poetry and trees. They crept up on him while he was in hospital with throat cancer more than a decade ago.
While there, he began writing poetry and produced his collection, A Glass Half Full, on love, business, politics and cocaine.
He would go around the country on poetry-reading tours entitled Did I Mention The Free Wine, guaranteeing an audience.
on these travels, he would always be accompanied by the elegant Marie-France, a former hairdresser, who remained faithful to him, as other women came and went, for 14 years. ‘ He is a remarkable man,’ she explained. ‘ And like him, I never wanted to be tied down.’
For his part, Dennis explained that Marie-France had ‘lasted the course’ because ‘ she doesn’t pressure me and we have an open relationship’.
Marie- France was with him, together with his mother and brother Julian, when he planted his one millionth tree in the Heart of england forest project he started in the private wood on his estate several years ago.
‘The forest will be my legacy,’ said Dennis recently.
He must have known how close he was to death because, just for once, he didn’t play the old tune of not wanting children. Instead he said: ‘I’ve had an amazing life. The only regret is not having a son or daughter to pass it on to.’ Alas, too late. Just as it’s too late to find out for certain if he killed a man.