Biographer to blow the lid on billionaire porn baron - Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, by Paul Willetts,

Published: 30 July 2010
by TOM FOOT

THE secret life of billionaire Soho porn baron Paul Raymond is to be revealed in a new biography.

Paul Willetts – acclaimed biographer of Soho raconteur Julian Maclaren-Ross and author of the “gangs and gun crime” thriller North Soho 999 – said he had uncovered a major “news scoop”, to be revealed on publication in late August.

Written in Willetts’ traditional thriller-style, Members Only is the first biography of Raymond. It traces his life through the changing face of Soho, from his strict Catholic upbringing to the self-styled “King of Soho” who became Britain’s richest man.

“It’s being billed as a ‘Life and times of,’” said Mr Willetts. “But it also portrays the world he inhabited and the circles he moved in. There are some great interviews with old faces from Soho.”

Mr Willetts, who moved to Cambridge from Soho, said his agent persuaded him to look at Raymond – whose porn empire has left a lasting legacy in Soho – after his death from respiratory disease in 2008.

Mr Willetts said: “I thought to myself: Do I really want to spend two years in this world? But as soon as I started digging around I found it fascinating.”

He said the book revealed the changing face of Soho from the 1940s through “the rise of the permissive society” in the 1960s to Lord Longford’s infamous report into pornography.

Longford – known as “Lord Porn” or “Lord Wrongford” – was caricatured as a reactionary, who sought to undermine freedom of speech by banning pornography.

Mr Willetts said: “Longford was wandering around Wigmore Street during the inquiry looking for a religious bookshop. I guess he was looking suspicious because the censors stopped him and, in front of a large crowd, he was asked to open his bag, which had a lot of magazines in it. A lot of the research has really made me laugh.”

Raymond’s self-made fortune – he died worth more than £800million – came from pornographic magazines, property development and ownership of the Raymond Revuebar strip club in Soho. He owned several English erotic magazines, such as Razzle, Men Only, and Mayfair. Models featured in his magazines included his girlfriend, Fiona Richmond.

With his fur coat, gold jewellery, customised Rolls-Royces and taste for showgirls, Raymond was often portrayed as the cartoonish personification of nouveau riche vulgarity. Yet he also embodied the entrepreneurial instincts that would transform this Liverpool lad into one of Britain’s richest men.

• Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, by Paul Willetts, will be released in August
by Serpents Tail.