Felix Dennis in 1971, a decade before he says he
pushed a man off a cliff.Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In a truly riveting article in today’s Times of London, writer Ginny Dougary recounts at length a boozy dinner she had with publishing magnate Felix Dennis at his lavish U.K. home. Dennis, who at times published Maxim, Stuff, and other lad-mag titles (and still publishes The Week), discussed his previous long-running crack-cocaine and sex addictions during the interview and also his old habit of using prostitutes. But by far the most bombshell revelation came late in the evening, when he said that he had “killed a man” roughly 25 years ago. According to Dougary, they were discussing whether he’d ever fought a man over his treatment of a woman. A snippet of their back and forth:
“Pushed him over the edge of a cliff.” In the Caribbean? “Don’t matter where it was. He wouldn’t let her alone. She told him to stop. I told him to stop. Many people told him to stop. Wouldn’t stop. Kept on and on and on. Made her life a living misery: beat her up, beat up her kids, wouldn’t let her alone, kept on, kept on — weren’t even his kids, so in the end, I had a little meeting with him, pushed him over the edge of a cliff. Weren’t ’ard.”
Later, Dennis contacted the reporter and asked that the admission be forgotten. Doctors even attested that he was in a weakened mental condition when the interview took place. But Dougary, after much soul-searching, published the interview anyway. It’s a very intense read — we recommend you look it over.
Maxim publisher Felix Dennis: ‘I’ve killed a man’ [Times UK]
