Matthew Rickardson

And then very quickly, from about 1954, he starts expanding.

And he always had the reputation for being quite ruthless.

He was trying to get a deal done and this politician was being obstructive.

So he said to him, look, I can either give you favorable publicity or I can pour a bucket of shit on you every day.

What's it to me?

Well, surprisingly, the politician decided he'd rather have the favourable publicity.

It's kind of illustrative of the sort of idea that you can make and break reputations.

And that was really part of the sort of family philosophy.

The main ambition was to make his father proud and to do better than his father, to internationalize the father's operation.

And he was willing to throw everything at it to get there.

He moves into England in the late 1960s.

When he came to Britain, he bought the News of the World, which was this, you know, humongous, best-selling Sunday tabloid, a huge commercial success.

It had printing presses, but they weren't used for most of the week, which was uneconomical.

So he began looking around for a daily title, and he fixed on The Sun.

Which at that point is an ailing newspaper, and he turbocharges that.

He immediately converted it into a tabloid, became famous for having these semi-nude models.

Topless women on page three.

Tabloid newspapers have been sensational for a long time.

And for him, that is the key message.

That's, you know, those kinds of stories will drive circulation.