When Richard Desmond lost his high court libel battle with the journalist Tom Bower today, he confirmed the view much of Fleet Street had had of him for years – he is a thin-skinned, foul-mouthed and interfering proprietor who uses his publications to settle personal grudges.
The jury decided the 57-year-old owner of the Express and Starnewspapers had not been libelled in two pages of Bower’s unauthorised biography of the jailed newspaper tycoon Conrad Black.
Desmond argued his reputation as a tough businessman had been damaged because Bower made him look like a “wimp” and also said that he ordered journalists to print negative articles about his enemies.
Bower’s win will no doubt please the scores of journalists who have been made redundant from Desmond’s four national newspapers since he bought them in 2000. Desmond has pursued a ruthless regime of cost-cutting at the titles while paying himself up to £1m a week.
It is a sweet victory too for those who have been on the receiving end of Desmond’s volcanic temper over the years, such as Ted Young, a former executive editor of the Express, whom Desmond is said to have punched in the stomach in full view of the newsroom in 2004.
Young, now editor of the freesheet London Lite, was in court this week with his family to hear the closing speeches. Rumours circulated that he was due to give evidence for Bower and would finally be able to talk openly about being punched – he signed a gagging clause when accepting a substantial payout for the attack. But he was never called. It would have taken two days of legal arguments to get his evidence submitted, said sources close to the case.
The defeat will also have been welcomed by the serious journalists who, one suspects, may well be less than happy about writing regular hagiographies on their boss detailing his philanthropy. Earlier this year, a piece appeared in the Express detailing Desmond’s “extraordinary generosity” after he was awarded “one of the world’s highest accolades” for his charity work.
It will be satisfying too, for the reporters who complain that their balanced reporting on sensitive issues such as asylum seekers are ruined by inflammatory headlines – journalists at the Daily Express were so appalled by this that in 2001 they passed an NUJ resolution, which declared the management had organised a “sustained campaign against asylum seekers”.
But there will undoubtedly also be bitterness in the already beleaguered newsroom that this court action – started over such a trivial matter – has dragged the reputation of Desmond’s newspapers and their hard-working journalists further into the dirt.
Despite rumours of Desmond’s interfering style circulating in the newspaper industry and beyond, the Express owner insisted under oath that he never intervened in editorial decisions. He declared that newspaper proprietors never meddle in editorial matters. “It’s not the way it works. You do not instruct or order your editors or journalists to write features about people you know. It does not happen,” he said, to incredulity from the press bench.
He seemed furious when the ex-Mirror editor Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University and Guardian blogger, told the jury Desmond had a worse reputation than any newspaper proprietor since the second world war — including Robert Maxwell.
As Greenslade expanded on this theory, Desmond gripped the table in front of him tightly, and his wife whispered, “Are you OK?”. When Greenslade finished his turn, the Desmonds left the court for some time.
Maxwell and Desmond have at least one thing in common – Maxwell fought a court battle to block Bower’s first book about him, though the late Mirror proprietor failed in the end and the publicity of the case merely fuelled sales.
Desmond brought the libel action because he objected to Bower’s account of his relationship with Black back in 2001-02, when the pair owned rival newspaper groups – Desmond being newly in possession of the Express and Star newspapers, and Black running the Telegraph Group.
In his unauthorised biography of Black, entitled Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, Bower wrote that the Canadian tycoon humiliated Desmond by making him apologise for negative articles printed in theSunday Express about the imminent demise of the Telegraph’s parent company, Hollinger International. As Hollinger did implode, Bower argued that Desmond had been “ground into the dust” by Black by saying sorry for something which was true, just as the Canadian tycoon had got the better of countless others.
In court, Bower’s barrister Ronald Thwaites, QC, concentrated less on the words complained of and more on attempting to rubbish Desmond’s reputation. He dug up evidence of past feuds, routed out a disgruntled former colleague and did his best to wind Desmond up in cross-examination. He mocked Desmond’s “thin skin” and said the case had merely been brought because of Desmond’s bruised pride at having been bettered by Black.
In one of the trial’s most dramatic moments, a sealed letter was produced after a mad dash to the Bower residence by Veronica Wadley. The letter, in which Bower requested an interview with Desmond for the biography he was writing about him, had been sent to Desmond’s home in northwest London by recorded delivery. It had been returned to sender after no one signed for it – though Desmond suggested it had not reached him because it was addressed to a house called “Badgers” when his residence is called “The Badgers”.
Before Wadley arrived with the letter, Desmond had suggested Bower had never written to him and that any letters produced in evidence were fakes – a “monstrous allegation”, said Thwaites, who later made a sarcastic remark about needing to find a silver-plated letter opener worthy of Desmond to open this “forgery”.
Central to Bower’s defence was the claim that Desmond regularly ordered his journalists to print negative articles about his rivals – specifically Conrad Black – to settle his grudges. Thwaites referred to Desmond as a “malevolent” and “interfering” proprietor who will tell lies “at the drop of a hat”.
After lengthy legal arguments, Thwaites was eventually allowed to play to the jury a tape of a phone call from July 2008, in which Desmond issued a sweary threat to a business contact. In this conversation, Desmond warned he could be “the worst fucking enemy you’ll ever have”. Three days later a libellous and defamatory article appeared in the Sunday Express about the contact and his hedge fund, Pentagon Capital Management.
Desmond appeared impassive as his expletive-laden rant echoed through the court room. It was not the first time the jury had been given a hint of his penchant for coarse language – letters read out in court revealed that his preferred nickname for Dan Colson, Conrad Black’s righthand man at Hollinger, was “Dildo Dan”. In the witness box, however, he was charm personified, brushing off insults from Bower’s barrister with smiling abandon.
But there were inconsistencies. He denied having anything to do with the Sunday Express printing a story about Pentagon and denied the existence of a grudge against the fund. Yet the jury was told that earlier this year a statement, read out in open court after Desmond agreed to settle the libel action which resulted from that article, said: “Mr Desmond accepts that it was his comments in the presence of Sunday Express journalists that prompted the Sunday Express to publish the article.”
Desmond’s defeat today was also a blow for Martin Townsend, his loyal editor of the Sunday Express. Townsend, who has also edited Desmond’s OK! magazine, appeared as a witness for his boss asserting that he alone decided what went into the newspaper. He denied being Desmond’s “puppet” or “yes man” but was accused by Bower’s counsel of telling lies.
Bower’s win raises one particularly intriguing prospect: will his unpublished biography of Desmond, the tentatively titled Rough Trader, now see the light of day?
