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Born in London on 8 December 1951, he left school at 15 and started working in the classified advertisements section of the Thomson Group, while playing the drums at night. After moving to another company, and, on the basis of his music interests, he opened a record shop.
Desmond founded Northern & Shell in 1974, and combining his interest in music and advertising, joined Ray Hammond in co-ownership of the latter's International Musician and Recording World monthly magazine. This was followed by the publication of Home Organist, whose editor contributed the old-school motto Forti Nihil Difficile ("Nothing is difficult for the strong" - it was Disraeli's motto), still used by the Northern & Shell publishing group. Desmond eventually bought out Hammond, who moved on to writing books as a futurologist.
In 1983, Northern & Shell obtained the licence to publish Penthouse in the United Kingdom. The company soon moved onto publishing a range of adult titles, including Asian Babes, alongside about 40 other specialist publications, on subjects such as bicycles, fitness, stamps, cars and cooking. It was the first company to move to the revamped Docklands and the Princess Royal opened the offices. When the company moved to the Northern & Shell Tower, the Duke of Edinburgh presided over the ceremonial.
In November 2000, Northern & Shell acquired Express Newspapers from United News & Media for £125m, enlarging the group to include the Daily and Sunday Express titles, the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday (which Desmond started), and the Irish Daily Star (owned jointly with the Irish Independent News & Media group). The Daily and Sunday Express each sell around 700,000 copies per issue. The Daily Star is currently the only national paper to put on sales year on year with an 18% increase (September 2008 - September 2009) and circulation figures of around 850,000, largely due to aggressive pricing policies which significantly undercut competitors such as The Sun.
Northern & Shell also publishes a wide range of magazines including the celebrity weekly OK!, started as a monthly in 1993, which is the largest weekly magazine in the world, with 23 separate editions from the US to Australia to Azerbaijan and with a readership in excess of 31million.
On 23 July 2010, Desmond bought the UK terrestrial-television channel Channel 5, which was losing money, from the German group RTL, for £103.5million. The new owner immediately proceeded to cut costs, starting with the dismissal of seven out of Channel 5's nine directors, beginning a drive to eliminate "£20m of yearly expenses". The stated plan includes the dismissal of up to further 80 of the network's 300 employees.
