UK billionaire media mogul Richard Desmond claims to have forced former Independent News & Media chief Gavin O'Reilly into a business decision about the Irish Daily Star by standing on a chair putting his "hands around his throat" at a meeting some years ago.
Mr Desmond says Mr O'Reilly is a "very nice bloke" and "a good salesman" but, in an interview with The Irish Times, he is scathing about the way IN&M was run under the O'Reilly watch, which ended in 2012.
Mr Desmond remains a 50/50 partner with the company in the Irish Daily Star, having first become involved with it when he bought the Express titles in 2000, when Sir Anthony O'Reilly was in charge of IN&M.
“He was too grand,” Mr Desmond says of Anthony O’Reilly, suggesting he surrounded himself with “old people . . . like a drinking club, or a rugby club”.
Mr Desmond describes "screaming rows" with IN&M people at meetings about the Irish Daily Star, which he used to visit once a month, until Denis O'Brien won effective control at the parent group.
He says he met Mr O'Brien once, "at the Bill Clinton fundraising horsesh*t".
“I’ve got to say, the partnership now is first class. It’s so good, I don’t have to go there because the people running that company now are commercial and like-minded with my management.”
Topless photographs
Mr Desmond says he has no interest in selling his Irish interest, despite threatening to shut it down in 2012 when it published paparazzi topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge,
Kate Middleton
. In the end, the departure of then editor Mick O’Kane proved sufficient remorse and Mr Desmond was calmed.
“I went berserk,” he says. The incident proved both the fine line between the commercial and editorial sides of the media in the Desmond empire, and his tendency to go full throttle.
Business
“I think that it’s pretty crazy to upset your customers whether they’re readers or advertisers, because we are running a business. We’re not a trust [like
The Irish Times
], we’re a business.”
Recalling the "hands around his throat" incident, Mr Desmond is fairly sure it related to his desire to do a sale and leaseback of the Star building in Dublin, a popular manoeuvre during the boom years designed to free up equity. He says he was met with reluctance and felt the need to take matters further.
“He’s quite a big bloke and he’d have all this mob,” he says of Mr O’Reilly, who did not respond to a request for comment this week.
Mr Desmond says he eventually got what he wanted, but it was “like warfare” and took a long time, he says. “I remember standing up on a chair, because he’s a big bloke Gavin, with my hands around his throat to get, I forget what it was, but it seemed important at the time.”
The Star did a sale and leaseback deal in the mid 2000s, realising a gain of €3.4 million.
Asked if he would be interested in buying IN&M's stake in the Star, Mr Desmond replied: "Definitely but the partnership is working well so I'm happy."
