The Real Richard Desmond (C4): The Way We Travelled (BBC2): FROM school drop-out to pornographer to national newspaper proprietor - The Real Richard Desmond set out its stall from the start.

The documentary had secured a rare interview with the proprietor of Express Newspapers but that didn't stop them investigating his rise to riches.

Newspaper owners from Hearst to Maxwell have been colourful characters, and Desmond, despite his suit-and-tie businessman facade, is no exception. He can't help it. A man who runs an empire consisting of the Daily Express, OK! and adult magazines is bound to have a certain fascination.

He also has power. Why else would Prime Minister Tony Blair phone him on the day the Express deal was done to offer congratulations and invite him round for a glass of champagne? (Something that says more about New Labour than Desmond perhaps.)

Desmond returned the favour by donating £100,000 to the Labour Party. His timing could have been better, as he gave the cash as the Government was considering whether to refer his Express takeover to the appropriate commission.

Desmond appears to have friends in royal circles too. Both Princess Anne and Prince Philip officially opened his new offices, although I don't imagine either is a subscriber to Asian Babes.

A frustrated drummer, Desmond's publishing career began when he launched a music magazine. Hobby publications followed. So did OK!, adult top-shelf titles and an adult TV channel. This enabled his opponents, including the Daily Mail, to lose no time in labelling him a pornographer.

He was asked directly about how he reconciled being a religiously-observant family man with publishing mucky magazines. His reply was that they were legal and regulated.

For every person claiming his publications were degrading and exploited women, the programme found another willing to testify that women of all ages were begging him to publish their naked photographs.

The moral issue doesn't concern him, as long as what he's doing is legal. He sees no further than the balance sheet. Asked what's best about running a newspaper, his answer was simple - the cash flow. Figures of a financial, not naked, kind are what turn him on.

A travel turn-on for viewers these days is someone like plucky explorer Benedict Allen crossing the Sahara with only three camels for company, rather than a studio-bound Cliff Michelmore extolling the virtues of a package holiday.

The Way We Travelled considered the new breed of travel presenters, such as Michael Palin, who went around the world in 80 days, but only after Alan Whicker, Mikes Kington and - perish the thought - Noel Edmonds had turned the offer down.

Instead of Judith Chalmers topping up her tan in Ibiza, we had Magenta de Vine in trademark dark glasses mixing with the street gangs and transvestites of central America.

More dangerous, though, was Nelson, one of Allen's camels. The beast had a phobia about sand dunes. He showed more reluctance to climb them than Desmond's readers' wives do to throw off their clothes.

Published: 01/08/2003