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Oz editors Richard Neville, James Anderson and Felix Dennis |
Cartoon that stripped ‘jammy’ millionaire Felix of his freedom
As editor of Oz magazine, Felix Dennis was sent to prison over an obscene cartoon. The public backlash that led to his freedom is now set to feature in a major Hollywood film, writes Tom Foot
BEATLES legend John Lennon led 10,000 people down Oxford Street in May 1971 in support of jailed magazine editor Felix Dennis.
The former boss of the counter-culture magazine Oz was sentenced to a year behind bars at the Old Bailey after his arrest by the Obscene Publications Squad.
It followed an issue published the previous year which included a cartoon created by teenagers deemed to be offensive by the authorities.
The Oxford Street march sparked a wave of high-profile protests that led to Dennis’s release from Wandsworth Prison after just two months following a public backlash.
Books, plays and documentaries have since chronicled the legendary Oz trials. A Hollywood blockbuster starring Sienna Miller, due to be released in the spring of 2008, is now set to recreate the story, though Dennis does not seem overly enthusiastic.
He says: “No one is going to argue that Sienna Miller won’t make a beautiful flower child, but I am more interested in historical accuracy than her inane posturing.”
He looks back on his time at Oz with great affection, pointing out its importance in championing sexual equality and environmental issues.
Dennis says says: “We had the most corrupt police force in central London. Oz was responsible for sending 17 officers to prison. Another 40 were forced to resign after we exposed them for their being in the pockets of the Soho porn barons. It is impossible to tell you how bent they were. If I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”
Since his time at Oz, which closed in 1973, Dennis has built up a successful publishing company, amassing a personal fortune of £750 million. He recently sold Maxim magazine and is now the country’s 95th richest man.
Sporting a pair of fluffy ugg boots, baggy tracksuit bottoms, and with a feral beard, he barks orders at his secretaries and booms laughter from a hearty gut.
He spoke enthusiastically of his love for “making money” and the “thrill of the chase”.
So who has been inspired by? Richard Branson? Roman Abramovich? Bill Gates? Not a bit of it. He says: “Emily Dickinson, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Browning, Robert Frost and WH Auden, obviously.”
Dennis, to my surprise, is a kind of cross between Sir Alan Sugar and Michael Rosen. He reveals he spends three hours every day writing poetry.
“People say that if you’ve got too much money you are not supposed to be able to write poetry,” he says.
“It’s something grossly unfair. It’s not right. The problem is my poetry sells in large quantities and there’s nothing they can do about it.
“The reason is that it is written in forms that have served the English language. The poetry that does sell is in anthologies. Sonnets, ballads, viennells, stanza form, rhyme, meter, that’s what’s there – that’s what they want.
“Since Ezra Pound f****d up The Wasteland, apparently poets can’t do that anymore. Critics have been voting with their wallets – no one buys it. Free verse does not sell.
“I love to write poetry that people can remember and has meaning, but is complex to write.”
The complexities of his work have won plaudits from poet laureate Andrew Motion, Tom Wolfe and Stephen Fry. He was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company to give readings in New York and Stratford-upon-Avon.
Dennis says: “They were forced to take me seriously – they are interested in the craft more than the emotional impact.”
First impressions, of an archetypal capitalist, are blown away after he reveals a secret multi-million pound environmental plan.
He says: “When you are travelling through England by car all you see is trees lining the roads. That is clever. Because when you are in a helicopter all you see is a load of empty squares. In this country we haven’t even got five native species of trees – we chopped them all down.
“I am going to make a forest full of native trees. I am talking about 600 acres. We have a site. I cannot tell you where, but it is in middle England.”
On the day of the interview, Dennis had been writing a long poem about the Old Bailey during the Oz trials.
He said: “It’s all about before and after. You have one event in your life, before and after. For me I have two: the spring of 1982 I became a multimillionaire and the late summer of 1971 I was put in the slammer in Wormwood Scrubs.
“The poem has a refrain. ‘For me,’ there is only before and after the slam of the Bailey’s iron door.”
After his release, Dennis moved to Kingly Street in Soho, after a police raid on a brothel left the apartment empty.
“I’ve been a sitting tenant since 1971.” he says. “I’m one of the richest men in England and I’m a tenant. Under the 1969 Rent Act, they can’t get me out.
“When I moved in here there was nothing. I replaced everything, put in bathrooms. This is why they can’t get me out. The 1969 Rent Act makes the officials look at the condition of the flat from when the tenant moved in. I put the windows in.”
“It’s still not right, though, is it?” he laughs.
“I’m too embarrassed to tell you how much rent I pay. I know people who spend more in Starbucks than I do on rent. Born jammy, me!”
Polite Notice to Health & Safety Fascists
To health and safety fascists:
We’ve met your kind before ––
The ‘Peace at Any Price’ brigade
When Hitler threatened war;
As snitches in the playground,
Uriah Heeps in suits,
Who'd stand and watch a kiddie drown
In case you wet your boots;
Who puff-up in your uniforms
And counterfeit the bold,
Then bleat and whine to hide the shame:
“I did as I was told!”
Who love to fuss and meddle,
And tell us what we know,
The poodle pimps of clerks and claims
With bureaucrats in tow;
Who chop down healthy street trees:
“We simply must, you see,
In case you slip... on fallen leaves...
And then where would we be?
We’d be fine.. impaling
your donkey heads on poles,
You piffling, pointless, jobsworth toads ––
Now get back in your holes!
Felix Dennis
October 2007 |
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