Biography

Poet and millionaire magazine publisher

Is the chairman and owner of Dennis Publishing, whose publications include Viz, Maxim, Bizarre, Stuff, Mac User and Fortean Times.

In 1971, Felix Dennis with fellow editors of 'Oz', Richard Neville and Jim Anderson stood trial for obscenity. 'Oz' was an underground satirical magazine founded by Neville, Anderson and Martin Sharp in London in 1967. This was a second version of the magazine as Neville and Sharp and two others had co-founded a previous version in Australia four years earlier. The London version is the more famous publication due to it's psychedelic layout and counter-culture content. In 1968, when Sharp started to drift away to other interests, Dennis was recruited as a new partner and editor. In May 1970 'Oz' put out its now notorious 'Schoolkids Oz' edition in response to criticism that it had lost touch with youth culture. The issue was made in collaboration with some secondary school students who had responded to their advertisement for school kids help to edit it, and so contained bawdy student type humour including the infamous 'Rupert the Bear' parody. The magazine had been targeted for a while by the Obscene Publications Squad of that time decided to prosecute Dennis, Neville and Anderson with 'conspiracy to corrupt public morals' due to the nature of the publication and the involvement of children. The subsequent high profile trial has become a cause celbre in free speech with celebrities like John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Marty Feldman, DJ John Peel coming to the defense of the publication. Their defense lawyer was John Mortimer few years before he created 'Rumpole of the Bailey'. The defendants was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to prison, they would later be acquitted at appeal due to judicial misconduct as the judge of the original trial had deliberately set out to ensure a guilty verdict was given.