{"id":5524,"date":"2013-07-01T13:59:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T12:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodvale.co.uk\/felix-dennis-2\/"},"modified":"2013-07-01T13:59:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T12:59:12","slug":"felix-dennis-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/felix-dennis-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Felix Dennis"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I last met Felix Dennis<\/strong> we sat in the kitchen of his flat in London and talked about his past, his business, his poetry, his tree planting and the fears that have driven him to live, what in anyone\u2019s terms, has been an extraordinary life. He chain-smoked then, and we drank a pre-lunch bottle of a fine Ros\u00e9 before separating and getting on with our respective lives.<\/p>\n

Today, a little over two years later we meet again in the same flat and there are obvious changes. We drink tea, there are no cigarettes and the conversation is somehow more candid and serious. Felix has joined the legions of people whose world has been rocked by the words, \u2018You have a tumour\u2019, the soft-step term often used to tell a patient that they have a potentially life-threatening illness\u2014in Felix\u2019s case, throat cancer.<\/p>\n

Now\u2014a year after surgery and treatment, and multiple years wiser\u2014Felix actually looks well. In fact, he looks healthier than he did two years ago. He has lost weight, his beard is tighter (a result of the radiotherapy) and the pallor that so often wilts the faces of heavy smokers is no longer obvious. Those are the immediate and apparent physical changes but there are deeper, more imperceptible shifts inside him that perhaps few will ever really see or understand.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say he is in any way less of a force than ever. As is so often the case his voice enters the room before he does. Today his anger and expletives are, not for the first time, directed at the local constabulary, who\u2019s \u201coverreaction\u201d to a small demonstration in the West End meant he had to walk back to his office. Not ideal for a man who is still dealing with the resultant lack of stamina after cancer treatment and is, this very evening, due to embark on a 30-date poetry tour that will include stops in the UK, Ireland, Holland, France and Belgium.<\/p>\n

I questioned the wisdom of booking a 30-date tour after cancer treatment and assumed he had begun arranging it before the diagnosis. \u201cNo, I did it on purpose afterwards\u201d he booms with his signature mighty laugh. \u201cI was absolutely determined to show that I could still get out on the road. This is a bit mad, this is a bit like an old lothario who\u2019s now in his 60s trying to prove that he can still pick up girls and drink and do all the things he used to do. Possibly he can, but it will take its bloody toll. Anyway, I was determined to do it and I have done it\u2014I am about to do it\u2014I hope.\u201d He is also being pressed to do a tour of America and his decision on that will likely be determined by just what a toll this tour takes.<\/p>\n

Felix is very candid about his cancer, as well as about the process of finding out what would be the best treatment. His diagnosis was given to him at his home on the island of Mustique in the Grenadines and he first sought treatment in London. \u201cI didn\u2019t stint on seeing a specialist,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s another problem with having too much money, you go and see too many. It\u2019s ridiculous, absolutely insane. I\u2019m like the French National Health Service; I\u2019m going to all these doctors until I get the diagnosis I want.\u201d However, that brought its own set of hurdles to jump. \u201cEverywhere I went I got different advice… everywhere I went. Then I began to realise that a turf war, a cancer turf war has erupted in London and this was finally told to me by doctors who are nowhere near London.\u201d They told him that the number of major cancer treatment centres in London was going to be reduced very radically and that they were all fighting to be the one that survives and trying to improve their \u201crecovery rate or their non-die rate as they call it\u2014the survival rate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felix felt that his wealth and name made him a potential prize patient and says that one surgeon \u201cwhom I will never name\u201d said to him, \u201cI\u2019m going to, if you want me to, do a very radical operation indeed. I\u2019m going to save your life and then you\u2019re going to build me a hospital\u201d. In the end, he went to the John Radcliffe Oxford University Trust hospital, not least because it was only a little over an hour away from his home in Warwickshire, but also because the surgeon he met didn\u2019t seem to see him as a meal ticket. Of the initial process, he says: \u201cI\u2019ve got to tell you that meeting all those consultants, specialists, surgeons, radiographers, the whole panoply was utterly confusing, terrifying, contradictory and very frightening.\u201d
\nHe says the cancer itself didn\u2019t hurt at all. In fact, he thought it was just a bit of pain following some root canal work he\u2019d had done. But treatment after surgery took its toll. \u201cRadiotherapy just bounces around and does damage,\u201d he says. \u201cI used to have perfect hearing; I\u2019ve now got a disassociated left ear that as far as I know will never go away. Half my teeth were taken out. They have to be taken out with radiotherapy because otherwise, you get necrosis. I\u2019ve lost my saliva glands from the surgery. I\u2019ve got no appetite, I can\u2019t eat ordinary food. If it wasn\u2019t for soft fruit and casseroles and soup I\u2019d be a dead man.\u00a0 So all of this comes from the treatment\u2014because we don\u2019t know how to treat it, we\u2019re wandering around in the Stone Age!\u201d<\/p>\n

The details of the excesses in Felix Dennis\u2019s life are well documented and one just needs a few clicks on the internet, and indeed onto his own website to find them. Suffice to say he had notoriety prior to his rise to fame as a publishing magnate and one of the richest men in Britain, and carried on building on that notoriety throughout his career. He has had near-death experiences more than once before his brush with cancer and has even gone \u2018cold turkey\u2019 to rid himself of a crack cocaine habit. However, one thing he hadn\u2019t planned to do was to give up smoking, but shockingly for those who know him, he has done just that. He says: \u201cSo I\u2019d been smoking, God knows, thirty, forty or fifty a day for forty-nine and a half years and then just stopped, just like I gave up narcotics.\u201d He amused the lady in the radiotherapy department with the explanation that he gave up through fear. \u201cTerror is the best patch,\u201d he told her and she proceeded to make a sign with just that quote to hang in the radiotherapy waiting room.\u00a0 He speaks highly of all those involved in treating him but says: \u201cI don\u2019t think there are any more grimly cheerful places than radiotherapy waiting rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all his success, anyone familiar with his poetry will know that he is acutely aware of the pitfalls of being rich. Poems from his latest book such as To a Child on Getting Rich<\/em> and Crumbs of Comfort<\/em>, offer an insight into the shallow gains of wealth. However, Felix, a self-confessed addict to the chase of making money, says it comes with the territory. Many lines of his poetry over the years have alluded to the fact that money doesn\u2019t buy real friendship. He tells me: \u201cObviously what happens if you\u2019ve got a bit of money is that a lot of people come to you and are after you, often for very good reasons, for charitable purposes or whatever, and you do kind of get tired of it. You grow absolutely sick and tired of people asking you for money. And I think that that probably interferes with your relationships with everyone else. So that\u2019s another price you pay. But look, if you don\u2019t want to pay the price there is a very, very simple way out. Give it all away!\u201d<\/p>\n

This alienation and insecurity is perhaps one of the reasons that poetry became the all-consuming passion of his life. It is a machine for him to use to dig into and turn over the soil of his emotions. Like a vast rambling garden, it contains seeds of ideas, human observations at various stages of development, and verse that holds young as well as more mature cuttings from the emotional turmoil he sees and feels. In the relatively short space of time that he has been writing, a dozen years or so, he has written over 1,500 poems. About a little less than a third of these have been published and the latest book, Love, Of A Kind<\/em>, contains about twenty new ones. The rest are the product of time spent trawling through his catalogue of unpublished work. Those praising his work include the author Tom Wolf; Broadcaster and author Melvyn Bragg; Poet Benjamin Zephaniah and actor, writer and director Stephen Fry. There are also a host of others. However, there is still a hint of snobbery amongst some of the poetry fraternity. Because he is a self-made millionaire who has not held back from self-promotion, there are those within a cliquey world that will not take his poetry seriously. That is their loss. Over the years he has published seven books of poems. He explores his life and the lives of others through rhythm, rhyme and meter, painting fleeting memories, chronicling highs and lows, delivering pearls of wisdom with irony, and speaking of loneliness, death, sex and sometimes loves\u2014of a kind.<\/p>\n

There is a long-held belief that artistic output should come from the soul, from something deeper than intelligence and application\u2014that somehow artistic integrity can only be defined by an entity outside of human perception and endeavour. Years ago, after one of his poetry readings, a lady came to up to speak to him. Crying softly and squeezing his shoulder she said \u2018How could you know? How could you know? You are not a mother. How could you know?\u2019 Felix Dennis has a unique ability to comprehend and articulate much of what happens around him, but that doesn\u2019t mean he has the same depth of feeling that his subjects may have. It takes a certain kind of intelligence and focus to be as successful as he has in business and that same ability has allowed him to possess a strong grasp of the human condition, even if, as he admits, he cannot feel it himself. \u201cI mean if you\u2019re not willing to try to understand the engine room of what is happening in all the people around you, then I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re writing about\u201d he says. He writes with the same intelligence and focus that he applies to everything he does. \u201cWhen I\u2019m writing I\u2019m a totally different person because I\u2019m immensely patient, I\u2019m incredibly empathetic, very empathetic and I can put myself in a woman\u2019s position, in an old person\u2019s position, in a dying person\u2019s position, in a young child\u2019s position. I can do that and I\u2019ve always been able to do it. Can I do this in real life? \u2026 No.\u201d
\nHe says that people who read his poetry, play his CDs in their cars and listen to his poems every day are a bit disappointed when they meet him, \u201cbecause I\u2019m not as immensely empathetic as perhaps my poetry is.\u201d<\/p>\n

An apparent lack of empathy doesn\u2019t mean a lack of knowledge or understanding. More often than not it goes hand in hand with vast knowledge and intelligence and in Felix\u2019s case this has been gained from personal experience of a life lived hard, as well as from his love of literature. \u201cThe Lord knows, I think I\u2019ve read far more than is good for me,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve just finished cataloguing all my books and I\u2019ve got 23,000 of the buggers, and I have read an awful lot of them. There is a lot of wisdom in poetry and in prose, and maybe some of it has rubbed off.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he has a strong thirst for more. \u201cBecause life is so short and there\u2019s so many things to do, so many sights to see, so many things to achieve and to try, I\u2019m terribly, terribly impatient. I just cannot bear wasting time.\u201d As I wrote once before, Felix Dennis will probably still cram more into whatever years he has left than a whole bunch of the rest of us put together, and after what he has gone through over the last two years you can be sure that he is even more aware that wasting time is not an option.
\nThe opening night of the tour in London showed Felix in fine voice, prowling the stage and turning on the drama for a crowd that showed their appreciation as though they were at a Rolling Stones concert. In poetry terms, perhaps they were.<\/p>\n

Within striking distance of the Marshwood Vale he visits Southampton on July 2nd, Exeter on July 3rd and Bath on July 6th. And with ticket prices including a ridiculously generous supply of fine wines, an evening with Felix Dennis is an experience that should be added to even the shortest bucket list.<\/p>\n

To book tickets visit www.didimentionthefreewine.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I last met Felix Dennis we sat in the kitchen of his flat in London and talked about his past, his business, his poetry, his tree planting and the fears that have driven him to live, what in anyone\u2019s terms, has been an extraordinary life. He chain-smoked then, and we drank a pre-lunch bottle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-5524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-features","tag-fergus-byrne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}