In an era of oligarchs and Middle Eastern royalty investing almost unlimited sums in
football, the British super rich have become a rare breed in the elite of club ownership.
But perhaps the most surprising owners who are still in the game are West Ham United's
controlling shareholders David Gold and David Sullivan, two men who started with nothing
but rose to become to of the biggest figures in the UK sex industry.
The two bought 50% of West Ham United (and its £120 million debt) from Icelandic owner
Björgólfur Guðmundsson, for just over £50 million, valuing the club at £105 million
pounds.
Guðmundsson was the owner of Icelandic bank Landasbanki but it collapsed and had to be
nationalised during the 2008 financial crisis, wiping out his $1 billion fortune. The club
was in danger of going bust before Sullivan and Gold, who had recently sold their interests
in Birmingham City, stepped in. Today they own 85% of the club and have been responsible
for arguably the biggest and most controversial act in the club's history: moving from the
Boleyn Ground, West Ham's historic home, for the Olympic Stadium, now the London Stadium.
But all that is to come. The roots of the two David's fortune and their interest in
West Ham can be traced back to more than 80 years ago.
David Gold was born a few metres from the Boleyn Ground at 442 Green Street. He was
born into a crushingly poor Jewish family. In his autobiography Solid Gold, he describes
a childhood where he was constantly damp and hungry. He also experienced anti-semitic abuse
and would later, after he made his fortune, have death threats hanging over his head from
the British Nazi group Combat 18. Gold grew up without his father Godfrey Gold, a petty
criminal who would be absent for long stretches of his childhood.
Unsurprisingly, growing up across the road from the Boleyn Ground, Gold became a fanatical
West Ham fan. He also almost played for the club too. Gold was a short but nippy left
winger nicknamed “The Rabbit”, ironic given the name of the best selling sex aide
at his chain of Ann Summers stores. But more on that later.
His West Ham career was not to be. Despite being offered an apprenticeship contract,
his father refused to sign the permission papers. The same would happen later when an
offer came from Charlton. His football career was over. After briefly training as a bricklayer,
he eventually scrapped enough money together to cover the lease of a magazine and book
shop, focusing on science fiction, on the recommendation of his brother and future business
partner Ralph.
It was whilst working at that shop on John Adam Street near Charring Cross Station that
he noticed that the biggest selling items were Hank Janson books, erotic pulp fiction
with lurid covers written by the British author Stephen Daniel Frances.
One shop became four shops in and around Soho, which they sold for their first millions before
buying a failing sex shop business called Ann Summers in 1972. After deciding to cut
out the middle man, the Gold brothers moved into publishing “erotica” -- via their
Gold Star Publishing company -- which they believed was very different to pornography.
Still, it was responsible for the likes of top shelf magazines like Whitehouse and later
Swish, a spanking magazine.
The move made the Gold brothers multi millionaires, and brought them to the attention of the authorities.
Gold found himself in the dock at the Old Bailey twice, during three court cases in
1973 after being charged under the Obscene Publications Act. They had taken issue with
a host of publications, including New Direction, In Depth, Lesbian Lovers, and A Women's Look
at Oral Love.
Gold – like Larry Flynt in the US – painted himself as a freedom fighter: “It seemed
like it was “them”, the shadowy establishment against me.” He would, he said, “Defend
erotica in the trenches.”
The famed barrister Sir John Mortimer – who would go on to write Rumpole of the Bailey
– successfully defended him and Gold escaped jail.
By the end of the 1970s the Gold Brothers had joined forces with another heavyweight
from the sex industry after receiving a phone call out of the blue. It was from his chief
rival in publishing, and begin a partnership that has lasted nearly 40 years.
David Sullivan was born in Wales to a working class family in Cardiff. Whilst not born into
quite the extremely poverty as the Gold Brothers, Sullivan worked his way to university. His
attachment to West Ham grew whilst studying in London and living in Hornchurch.
According to one 2010 interview in the Western Mail, Sullivan was working for £30 a week
in a petrol station when he read an interview with Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse
magazine, in the News of the World.
Shortly afterwards he hired a photographer, paid a female model and started selling 50
photographs on a sheet for £1. “I am not embarrassed by what I have done. I am not
one of those people who tells the neighbours I’m in the print business. I’m in the
adult entertainment industry and I have met some lovely girls and made a lot of money.”
By the late seventies he had sown up half of the adult publication market as well as
a string of sex shops across the country. Which is when he picked up the phone to the
Golds.
“We both had a range of top shelf magazines and were competing with each other for space
on the shelves,” recalled Gold. “Everything changed the day he telephoned.” Sullivan
went into joint business with the Golds, starting a lucrative partnerships for the next four
decades.
Although it wasn't without its controversy. Pornography was being lambasted by those who
saw it as being exploitative of women and those morally outraged by the sale of increasingly
explicit material, which David Gold had initially been against.
And, unlike the Gold brothers, Sullivan did spend time in jail. In 1982 he was convicted
of living off immoral earnings and spent 71 days in jail.
Their first major business foray was to launch a national newspaper, the Sunday Sport and
later the Daily Sport, whose nudity, sex ads and tongue in cheek headlines were Fake News
before Donald Trump popularized the phase.
Famous headlines including “Kim Plot to Nuke Strictly Craig”, “Sex With Mr. Frosty
Mangled my Bellend.” and, the classic of the genre, “Ten Years Ago The Lotto Made
Me a Millionaire: Now I suck Off Dogs for Quavers.”
It was here that a young, up and coming salesperson called Karen Brady was hired to take charge
of the classified ads section
The newspapers were, in the words of David Gold, a “cult hit” that sold 1.5 million
copies a week at their peak. The paper once even had Bobby Moore as a columnist. They
sold the papers for £50 million in 2007. Just before the financial crash.
Yet it was their next move after launching the Sunday Sport that would bring Gold and Sullivan back to football,
and for Gold at least, back to West Ham United.