The Real Deal: How Richard Desmond became a billionaire

“Always know what you’re aiming for and keep it in mind at all times. Keep to your word and stick by your mates. And remember you also have to give something back to the world.”

This is as close as Richard Desmond, self-described media mogul and billionaire, gets to philosophy and is the best advice he can offer anybody starting "at the bottom the way I did when I was 15".

Now 63, Mr Desmond owns Britain's Express and Star newspapers, OK! magazine and half of the Irish Daily Star among other assets. He has distilled his journey through his business successes in a new autobiography, The Real Deal, which is published today by Random House.

In the book, the man who says business meetings are often a matter of “kill or be killed”, acknowledges that many of his own achievements “have been less about doing the right thing than about doing it at the right time”.

Mr Desmond started out in telesales at 15, although the book outlines various brushes with entrepreneurialism before that, including a lucrative job as a cloakroom boy at a club, where he not only raised prices on his own initiative but also put two coats on one hanger, thus doubling his turnover.

Now presiding over a fortune estimated at £1 billion (€1.4 billion) at least, Mr Desmond has finally found what he would judge to be financial security (or avoiding the “park bench”), having last year sold Britain’s Channel 5 for £463 million. He had bought it for £103 million in 2010.

Porn magnate

This came after a start decades previously as a publisher of music magazines and a subsequent diversification into the lucrative world of pornography via

Penthouse

magazine and other publications including

Asian Babes

and

Readers’ Wives

. He has since sold the titles but retains interests in adult television channels, while objecting to the idea that he is a porn magnate.

It is clear from the book, a pacy read, why Desmond’s business reputation is one of toughness and a searing, perhaps occasionally frightening, focus on costs and detail. He describes at one point trapping a business associate in a headlock in order to conclude a deal. “So the deal was done,” he concludes.