[8] He is the founder of Northern & Shell, a publisher known for running The Health Lottery and for having owned a variety of pornographic titles and of celebrity magazines (including OK!

[14] After Cyril lost a significant amount of family money to gambling, his parents divorced,[15] and 11-year-old Desmond moved with his mother, Millie, into a flat above a garage; he has described his impoverished early adolescence as a time when he was "very fat and very lonely".

[19] The company soon began to publish a range of pornographic magazines itself including Asian Babes, Readers Wives[20] and Barely Legal,[21] numbering 45 such titles in all when they were eventually sold.

[22][23] During the 1980s, Desmond ran a premium rate phone sex company until 1988 when he sold the business after British Telecom raised concerns about the content.

[26] By 2003, Desmond's company had expanded to broadcasting seven channels, with plans to launch six more and the business was described as "extremely lucrative", generating £17m of the £60m operating profits of Northern & Shell.

"[30][31] In February 2004, in a move that some media outlets interpreted as an attempt to improve his image in view of his bid for The Daily Telegraph.

[34] In a 2002 interview for BBC Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman, Tony Blair was asked if it were appropriate to accept a controversial £100,000 donation from Desmond due to Desmond's links with the pornography industry,[35] to which Blair replied "if someone is fit and proper to own one of the major national newspaper groups in the country then there is no reason why we would not accept donations from them".

[2] In November 2021, The Guardian reported that Desmond was upset at his Wikipedia entry using the word "pornographer" and had instructed lawyers to get the term removed because, in his opinion, the phrase "only refers to publishers of illegal or obscene material".

The deal reportedly left the Americans out of pocket and after Desmond refused to pay compensation, his employee was kidnapped and assaulted in New York.

Desmond called this account "a fantasy", but encouraged his employee to report the incident to the police and hire a bodyguard to protect himself.

[42] In February 2005, The Guardian reported that the claim Desmond had received death threats from the New York Gambino mafia family was contained in affidavits from FBI agents released during Martino's trial relating to the fraudulent use of the telephone lines.

[21] In 2014 the Financial Times referred to the Desmond-owned Express running "apparently repetitive coverage of immigration, freak weather events and theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

[49] For its defamatory articles covering the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, which numbered a hundred, the Express paid damages of £550,000 to the toddler's parents in 2008.

[50] However, in his appearance at the Leveson Inquiry, Desmond said the Express had been "scapegoated" by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC),[48] who had "failed to provide us with any guidance" and were thus implicitly responsible for the defamatory articles.

On the same day, Desmond attacked The Daily Telegraph (with which he was a joint venture partner in the West Ferry newspaper printing plant), then considering accepting a takeover by the German Axel Springer group, and asked if they were keen on being run by Nazis.

[52][53] Desmond reportedly harangued The Daily Telegraph's chief executive and associates in faux German at a business meeting and imitated Adolf Hitler.

[56] In August 2005, the former Daily Express executive editor Ted Young made an out-of-court settlement with Desmond's company ahead of an industrial tribunal.

[66][67][68] "Never before", wrote Tom Bower in The Guardian at the time, "has a government regulator (Ofcom) lowered the threshold for the suitability of the prospective owner of a TV channel enough for someone like Desmond to control a potentially lucrative franchise".

The new owner immediately proceeded to cut costs, starting with the dismissal of seven of Channel 5's nine directors, beginning a drive to eliminate "£20m of yearly expenses".

In the first full year of Desmond's ownership, the broadcaster saw a 28% surge in revenue - the biggest TV advertising haul in its 14-year history - "thanks to factors including the arrival of Big Brother and the return of a major media buying contract with Aegis".

[16] In 2010, Desmond was ranked the equal-57th richest man in Britain by The Sunday Times Rich List,[73] with a net worth of £950 million.

[78] Desmond sent Jenrick a text message after meeting him at a fundraising dinner stating "We don't want to give Marxists loads of doe [sic] for nothing!"

[85][86] In December 2014, during the run-up to the 2015 United Kingdom general election, Desmond was reported to have agreed to donate £300,000 to the UK Independence Party.

The grants, distributed by the People's Health Trust (PHT), help many good causes and the elderly in local communities across the UK.

[16] In October 2010, Janet divorced him and Desmond subsequently married Joy Canfield, a former manager for British Airways, in 2012.