Felix Dennis
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2007
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the publisher Felix Dennis. He blossomed among the flower power generation, finding fame as one of the defendants in the notorious Oz Magazine obscenity trial in 1971. It fired his loathing of the establishment but instead of dropping out he opted in and beat them at their own game. For the past 30 years his talent has been spotting a niche in the magazine market and launching a title to fill it - his success has made him one of the richest men in Britain.
For many years his life was one of addiction and excess - but latterly the only thing he feels compelled to do each day is write poetry and he's become one of a very rare breed - a best-selling poet.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: One Too Many Mornings by Bob Dylan Book: The Dictionary of National Biography Luxury: A very long stainless steel shaft to encourage pole-dancing mermaids!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 2007. My cast away this week is the publisher Felix Dennis. For the past 30 years his talent has been spotting a niche in the magazine |
| 0:35.2 | market and launching a title to fill it, but he is far from your typical sober-suited |
| 0:40.3 | corporate hot shot. His life is lived in vivid technical, an apparently chaotic |
| 0:45.8 | explosion of success, excess and outrage. He blossomed among the flower power generation, |
| 0:51.6 | finding fame as one of the defendants in the Oz magazine |
| 0:54.8 | obscenity trial, charged with conspiring to corrupt the morals of the young. |
| 0:59.6 | It fired his loathing of the establishment, but of dropping out he opted in and beat |
| 1:04.0 | them at their own game becoming one of the richest men in Britain. He's twice |
| 1:08.3 | faced life-threatening illness after the first he developed a rampaging crack cocaine addiction after the second he started writing poetry |
| 1:17.4 | An engaging monster full of contradictions and reeking of sulfur that's what they said about you in the times a little harsh maybe |
| 1:23.9 | is it about right? |
| 1:25.9 | Mm one hates to say so Kirstie but I don't think they're too far off the mark. |
| 1:31.6 | The contradictions then I mean there's something of the |
| 1:35.4 | hippie there's something of the yuppie how do you see yourself? Well I try not |
| 1:41.6 | to think about it at best I'm tremendously loyal and very generous. I know that. |
| 1:47.0 | At worst I'm bad-tempered. But usually I'm bad-tempered because somebody's forgot to iron my shirt. |
| 1:54.0 | If we've just lost 20 million bucks, I'm not bad temper at all. |
| 2:00.0 | It's anything serious I don't get angry about at all. It's just the little things that drive me nuts. |
| 2:07.0 | Can I ask you for a moment? I mean we'll concentrate on it hopefully in more detail later on. |
| 2:10.0 | But when you stood in the dock of the old Bailey back in 1971 alongside your two co-editors, |
... |
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