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Headline:

'Drunks talk trash, don't they?'

Synopsis:

The last time publisher Felix Dennis gave an interview, he said he killed someone. How do you top that? With a national poetry tour - and a lot of free wine.


For the record, Felix Dennis says he didn't kill a man, as he claimed in a newspaper interview published earlier this year. The notorious magazine publisher and 101st richest person in the country, who is now a poet, says that he and his interviewer, Ginny Dougary, got very drunk, and he started talking rubbish, and made up a story about pushing a man over a cliff 25 years ago. They were so drunk, he says, that "Ginny was carried into the car. I know, because I helped my chauffeur. We were both completely plastered. Do drunks talk trash? Then you have the answer." He blames the wine, and thyroid medication. Dougary, meanwhile, has written that she "had more fun with [Dennis] than in almost any other interview".

I arrive at Dennis's compound in the Warwickshire countryside (he has several others, in New England, the Caribbean, and so on). It takes me a while to find him. He isn't in the main house, Dorsington Manor. Perhaps, I'm told, he is in Highfield, a nautically themed building on the estate. So I go to Highfield. Inside are, among other things, a swimming pool, a hot tub, and an aquarium. ...



*Felix Dennis's Homeless in My Heart is published by Ebury Press at £12.99. The Did I Mention the Free Wine? tour runs until October 21. Details: www.felixdennis.com

Publish date:

2 October 2008

Author:

William Leith

Source:

The Guardian

Media:

Access Interview