How to Get Rich

by Felix Dennis

So I invested heavily in The Week. It lost money. What did you expect? Ian Leggett was desperately concerned that I had bitten off more than I could chew. He had a right to be concerned. I asked some talented people to help out from Dennis Publishing, careful myself not to interfere with the creation of the editorial product. They already had that right. It did not need messing with. The Week promptly lost more money, so I bought out all of the minority investors, except for Jolyon Connell, the founder, and the editor, Jeremy O’Grady. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, The Week began to take off. I remember the thrill one evening when I heard a person I did not know at a dinner party quote straight out of my magazine. Even more unbelievably, readers began to proselytise. No, I mean it. Not just express satisfaction, but proselytise like religious fundamentalists. Like true believers. In thirty years of publishing, I had never seen anything like it. Strangers would buttonhole me at gatherings and tell me how many subscriptions to The Week they were responsible for amongst their friends. Then they would demand that I did not change a thing in the magazine. I was to leave the editorial alone, did I hear? I heard. I never had any intention of messing with it, although I did ask Jolyon and Jeremy to introduce obituaries and the weather into its pages, which they did. Imagine that: a magazine which reports on last week’s weather! I met famous people, I mean really famous people: prim...