I MET THE owner of Dennis Publishing at his Warwickshire compound, where the properties include a mansion fashioned from scented green oak, a swimming pool, cinema, gym and Jacuzzi. A former editor of Oz magazine, 55- year-old Dennis has built a $500 million (£300 million) fortune, mostly through magazines — originally computer titles and latterly with dramatically successful American publications such as Maxim, Stuff and Blender. He is now planning to buy 50,000 acres in England and plant an oak forest for public use.

He protested, as he uncorked a bottle of Lafite Rothschild, that he has no wisdom: “Anyone lecturing anyone else is almost certainly a charlatan. The acolytes climb the mountains and fight their way past the yetis and finally find the hermit and say: ‘What is the meaning of life, oh master?’ And he says: ‘You haven’t got a Mars bar, have you?’ ”

Television sucks your life-force

“There’s an enormous world out there. You have been born into a Western country. You haven’t been terrorised by a militant clergy. You have more money than 90 per cent of the people on the planet, and you know you’re going to die. How can you watch television? People who watch television, you look in their eyes and it’s like dead fish. They’re lying in their everyday graves.”

Knowing isn’t doing and doing isn’t knowing

“I cannot abide people who come to me and say ‘I’ve got a great idea’. This is really stupid. I’ve had about ten great ideas today and I don’t doubt the people working for me have had ten apiece, too. It’s the execution that matters. Mr Dyson isn’t the only person who ever thought of a vacuum-cleaner that didn’t have a bag. He’s the only one who ever executed it effectively. It’s got bugger all to do with ideas. Take it from me, execution’s the key. Take the idea and make it better.”

All money gives you is choices

“That’s all. You end up with far too many houses and a load of old dross that you don’t really want or need. My whole ethos is ‘spread it about’. Spend it as fast as you can get your hands on it — to my accountants’ endless concern, as they think I’m going to end up a pauper. Imagine the four milliseconds before you’re hit by the Clapham omnibus after foolishly stepping out of your Rolls-Royce into the road, and thinking, ‘Damn, I had £3 million in my current account and I haven’t done anything with it’.”

If you hit real turbulence and you’ve got a drink in your hand, save the drink

“Take your feet off the floor, your arse becomes a fulcrum and, even though you’re being thrown about, you’ll still be able to hold your drink for the important business of getting the liquor down your throat before you hit the ground. I was on Concorde a few years ago, a port engine conked out and we dropped 30,000 feet. Concorde has these wonderful altimeters at the front where everyone can see them — but what you’re not supposed to see, of course, is the numbers whizzing down 1,000 feet every four seconds, knowing that at zero it’s all over. The edges of the wings were bright red.

“Food everywhere, the drinks cabinets broken, people puking up all over the place, stewardesses being thrown around with all their skirts riding up — this is my abiding memory. The cabin door popped open and you could see the pilots and the navigator. They couldn’t speak to each other because of the terrible noise of the plane shaking. You thought it was going to shake to pieces. Good job it’s made of titanium. They were trying to steady each other’s hands to press the electro-mechanical knobs.

“Eventually they managed to hit the right sequence of buttons and the plane righted. Then silence, just the sound of sobbing and regurgitation and the distant hiss of the air conditioning. So if you’re going to die and you have a drink in your hand, save the drink! Mercifully, I managed to hold on to my gin and tonic.”

There’s no such thing as too much sex