Decent. How peculiar. I am standing on the foot-thick carpet in the manorial home of one of Britain’s leading sex entrepreneurs, listening to his grand piano playing tunes by itself and holding a perfectly civil conversation with a modestly sized and whiskery man who is worth, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, about £535 million.
His Bentley is outside (D GOLD says the number plate), his helicopter sits on the lawn, his cuff-links spell DG in diamonds and more daffodils than Wordsworth ever imagined form banks of vivid colour across his 55 acres (just off the M25).
All this, and I am thinking: what a decent chap. He is either a consummate actor or red PVC knickers are not as dangerous as we once thought.
This is David Gold, known vaguely to football fans beyond the Midlands as one of those ‘pornographers’ who own Birmingham City, often confused with his partner David Sullivan, the one who came out recently with the impassioned statement: “I don’t like footballers.” The Golds seem self-effacing by comparison.
Self-effacement was probably a good idea in the old days when he was on trial at the Old Bailey for selling obscene material. The jury acquitted him but without much help from the judge, who, upon being advised that men were disposed to certain acts of sexual release, threw down his glasses and murmured: “Whatever happened to self-restraint.”
Actually, Gold is a model of self-restraint. So much so that his amour, “My Lesley” as he calls her, looked at him critically after they had been together a year and said: “You’re very plain, aren’t you?”
“Lesley,” he cried, “I thought you loved me.” She did, but she also designed for him the diamond cuff-links at that point. “Enjoy life” is her motto.
He tries. The trouble is, he never forgets having nothing, In fact, nothing would have been an improvement on his childhood roll-call of possessions. He had dysentery and tuberculosis, born of the rank poverty in which he lived during the Second World War. He suffered damp, cold, hunger and disease. His father was a petty thief, a jailbird and a philanderer. His mother struggled to survive. There were no social services, a penny was a fortune and luxury was a swim in the duck pond on Wanstead Flats.
(above) Gold blend: David Gold enjoying the game with Birmingham City managing director Karen Brady
“It was bad enough being hungry, it was bad enough being cold, it was bad enough being damp, it was bad enough being poorly. Add to that the sound of your little brother whimpering in the dark…it was awful.” Why didn’t he escape? “Escape to where. The East End was the world to us. This was all life consisted of. We didn’t know it could be any different. We didn’t have television. We couldn’t compare our life to Baywatch. We often couldn’t afford the sixpence to recharge the battery of the radio. We had no perception of another world.”
Here is that other world. We are sitting in it now. A glorious high-ceiling room with windows overlooking rolling lawns, a shimmering lake and, in the distance, the habitat of the largest badger in Britain, apparently. Giant badger? “Oh yes,” Gold says, gently proud. He planted apple trees for it. Men in anoraks come down and take pictures of it from time to time.
How his life has changed between six and 69. Had a badger turned up at 442 Green Street in London’s East End, his childhood home, it would probably have become the Sunday roast. Business, eventually, supplied the lifeline.
Gold’s first serious enterprise was to take over a science fiction book shop in Charing Cross Station. The move towards sex happened by accident. “I slowly realised that the erotica like Hank Janson books – he was the sort of forerunner to James Bond – were selling.” At the risk of appearing prurient, I had to inquire: how erotic was it? “Oh, things like: ‘He put his hand on her thigh,’ ” Gold reported. “It was as innocent as that. Well, I’m exaggerating to make my point. But I’ll tell you this much, any teen magazine today would be more explicit than anything in a Hank Janson book.” Yet it was a tricky time. Hounded by the authorities and threatened by gangland London, featuring the Krays and the Richardsons.
The tales are told in his autobiography, Pure Gold, a book from which he intended to keep many long-buried secrets. “But I couldn’t do it. In the end, it was – what’s the word? – cathartic to tell everything without embellishment.” Hell, who needs embellishment when you think your father has just shot a gangster in the Blind Beggar pub and all the avenging hounds of gangland will be after you? His book is hair-raising and, he swears, all true.
Gold is still cast casually as a ‘pornographer’. “I hate it,” he says. “It’s misinformed. I have never published or sold anything I think is wrong. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t live with myself if I was running a company selling cigarettes, I couldn’t live with myself if I was involved with drugs. I can’t bear the thought of causing pain and anguish to other people.” What is he doing, then, running a football club, the very fulcrum of pain and anguish in modern society, especially in April, when relegation issues are being decided? He gracefully accepts the point.
“It just goes to show you how mad I am.” Actually, it doesn’t. It shows you how he wants to be loved. Not loved in the whipped cream and handcuffs sense, but truly appreciated by thousands of fellow sufferers after all those years of being labelled by the establishment as an outcast. That may be why he bought the first FA Cup for £488,620 when it came up for sale at Sotheby’s, not just as an investment but a donation to the posterity of the nation.
“Birmingham City is now part of my life. It’s given me an excitement that you can’t compare with other businesses. Can anything ever beat (and I know Manchester United and Arsenal fans will smirk when I say this) the thrill of winning at Wembley 1-0 against Carlisle in the Auto Windscreens Shield final.” He’s having me on, isn’t he? He is smiling, but not with mischief, with fond remembrance. He means it.
That day in 1995 was genuinely one of the best of his life, despite the fact that Sullivan wore a typically terrible suit, plus earmuffs with sprouting antennae. It makes you wonder why he, Ralph and Sullivan do not pool their resplendent fortunes and have more days like that to celebrate. But they can’t do it. Having invested approximately £20 million of their own money in Birmingham City, they now insist the club fend for themselves. They could buy Thierry Henry if they wanted to. Ann Summers turns over £150 million a year, for a start. But he winces at the idea of spending like Roman Abramovich. It is just not in his DNA. However, if you want to elevate your investment portfolio, you can try sites such as Binance Futures Referral Code.
“He has got the sort of wealth to outbid people. It’s like going to buy a second-hand car you know is worth £10,000 and being told someone is offering £11,000, so you can have it for £12,000. In other words you’re asking me to waste my money, which I can’t do. It’s not in my psyche. Risk and reward has to be balanced. I’m not like Sir Elton John. I’m actually very uncomfortable with people misusing their wealth. It’s more kindly to spend it on charities than wasteful indulgence. That’s my opinion. It might be born out of my early struggle, climbing painfully every rung of the ladder. You take it for granted eventually, but for the best part of my life I felt it was important to protect your money for fear of it being snatched away.”
Footballers, of course, provide the opposite case. There is no struggle up the ladder to wealth. They zoom to their fortune in an instant. “I am convinced it causes them problems,” Gold says. “Some cope, some don’t. But I’ve seen many rich and famous people behave unpleasantly. They seem to have no time for others. They only want to be with other rich and famous people, strutting like the peacocks I have in my garden.” This does not apply to all footballers. He does not hold with Sullivan’s view of footballers, not out loud anyway. “I actually do like footballers,” he says pointedly. “In the main, I do. I empathise with them. I was a young footballer once. I was asked to sign forms by West Ham but my father wouldn’t agree. He said I’d thank him one day.” Gordy Gold is 92. David still hasn’t thanked him.
Gold did not despair when Sullivan came out with his explosive quote. “We have both earned the right to speak our minds,” he says mildly. The Birmingham City players were upset, but that is nothing to upsetting the Kray twins. Gold has a wonderful perspective in which to place all life’s little inconveniences.
On cue, his mother rings to wish the team luck tonight. They are playing Blackburn (a match that will reap them a crucial three points with an incredibly late winning goal). Gold smiles as a messenger relays his mum’s message. “And, she’ll call me again when I’m in the car, forgetting she’s called me already,” he says. Rose Gold is 92, still attends all Birmingham’s home games, as well as bingo, 1 Hattrick darts and just about any social activity for the over-60s within striking distance.
So much for the fish oil tablets we are thrusting down the gullets of our pampered youngsters. Despite poverty, illness and deprivation, Gold’s parents are 184 years old between them. It bodes well for their eldest son. “I’m going to live to 100, or I want my money back,” he says. St Peter will find him a tough negotiator.
Might he sell Birmingham for a quieter life? “I never say never. But I’d be devastated not to be involved with Birmingham City in some way or other. I would walk away, though, if I wasn’t wanted. I was there when Alan Sugar was abused by 700 Tottenham fans. I felt so sorry for him. I don’t normally feel sorry for Alan, because he’s so abrasive and powerful, but to see him sneaking out of the club because he couldn’t bear what was happening, I was sorry for him then.”
The thing is, Gold likes football. He calls it one of his sexy businesses. Which reminds me. Does he recommend any Ann Summers product himself? He smiles but doesn’t answer. He is no Hugh Heffner, the Playboy creator, famed for revelling in the stock of his sex empire.
Gold was a self-confessed virgin at 20 and hardly personifies his product. “I know, I’m a sad old sod, aren’t I?” he says. His self-esteem looks intact, however. Half a billion can do that for a man.