Felix Dennis, chairman of the privately-owned Dennis Publishing company, first came into the public eye in 1971 as one of three defendants in a lawsuit involving the
corruption of public morals.
    Dennis, along with the two other editors of the radical hippie magazine Oz, were brought up on charges following their publication of articles on homosexuality and sadism that were purported to have been written by school children. 
   The magazine also contained a cartoon of the popular children's character, Rupert the Bear, deflowering Gypsy Grannie. 
      The judge in the case, a bastion of the UK's right-wing establishment, gave Dennis a shorter prison sentence than his two co-editors on the grounds that he was "very much less intelligent than his fellow defendants."
    But, looking back, Dennis couldn't have been too dim. These days he runs a multi-million dollar international publishing empire.
   His company has built up a strong portfolio of specialist titles that include The Week, Auto Express, Computer Buyer, Computer Shopper, Dreamcast, MacUser, Maxim, PC Gear, PC Pro, PC Zone, PS and Stuff in the UK, as well as editions of Maxim and Stuff in the US.
   Dennis will soon launch U.S. editions of The Week, a newsweekly to compete with Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, and Blender, a music title to compete with Rolling Stone and Spin.
   Along with his success in business, Dennis has also acquired a few other establishment trappings. In 1999, he was revealed as the largest single financial donor to the UK's ruling Labour party, giving them close to $300,000 that year, in addition to funds provided in previous years.
    However, Dennis does not seem to have lost his edge when it comes to his ability to shock. In 1999 he came to the rescue of Los Angeles street-gang cricketers whose goodwill tour of Britain was called off when their sponsor pulled out. Dennis read about the cancellation of the Compton Homies' planned  tour and telephoned them with an offer of $50,000 to help the team. The Comptom Homies is made up of former teen-gang members  from the city's toughest neighborhoods. 
   That same year he raised a grin when he replaced outgoing U.S. Maxim editor Mark Golin, who had defected to Conde Nast, with the fictitious character "Sammy the Hamster."
    Looking ahead, Dennis clearly has further ambitions in addition to extending the franchise of The Week to the US. He is backing the next generation of enfant terrible publishers as an investor in James Brown's I Feel Good publishing company.  Brown, not to be confused with the U.S.  soul singer of the same name, is the legendary editor who started the British male magazine Loaded and was once the top editor of the British edition of GQ.
   Brown came to the attention of the U.S. publishing community when he was forced to part company with GQ following the publication of an article that voted Nazi General Rommel as one of the "coolest cats" of the Twentieth Century.

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