The Look of Love (4 Stars)

Doesn't a girl wrapped in a Union Jack make you feel proud to be British? We Brits aren't as obsessed with our flag as the Americans or the Swiss, we usually only dust off our flags for sporting occasions, but this photo should make our hearts beat faster. It's Tasmin Egerton, who plays the role of Fiona Richmond in the true story about the life of the sad billionaire Paul Raymond. I assume that the screenshot above is based on a real photo session in the 1970's, when she was at the peak of her fame.

Was Paul Raymond really sad? He was the richest man in England, and he had sex with countless beautiful women, so most men would envy him. The film shows that money can't make you happy, and sex definitely can't make you happy. At the beginning of the film we see that he has a loving wife who knows that he's being unfaithful with a series of one-night stands. Each night when he returns home late she asks "Was she nice?" He makes no attempt to conceal his infidelity. She loves him enough to put up with his minor affairs. It isn't until he meets Fiona Richmond and stops coming come that she wants a divorce.

Paul Raymond never officially married Fiona, but they had a steady relationship that lasted for a few years (between six and ten years, I can't be sure). She was a sexual woman, and she liked doing threesomes or foursomes with Paul, but she became jealous when he started doing threesomes or foursomes without her. She was willing to share him with other women, but she refused to give him away, not even temporarily.

Fiona Richmond's name was well known when I was growing up. To advertise one of her plays she rode naked on a white horse through the narrow streets of Soho. She was arrested, despite claims that she was portraying Lady Godiva, an icon of British culture. She had to pay a fine, but it was worth it. The tickets of her play sold out. It was a deliberate attempt to shock people, staged by Paul Raymond. He was famous for pushing boundaries. He knew exactly what was allowed in the prude British culture of the 1960's and 1970's, and he always did just a little bit more.

Fiona was also well known for her series of reports, "Around the World in 80 Lays", published in the men's magazine Mayfair. It was a comparison of her experiences with men from different countries, in particular how good they were in bed. As a teenager I read the reports. Mayfair was easily accessible to me, either my father's copies at home or the magazines secretly passed around at school. I was slightly disappointed to find out in the film that it was all fictional. Fiona never left her luxury London apartment, she just sat at her typewriter inventing her stories about men from Moscow to Sydney. I wanted to believe the stories, but Fiona was faithful to Paul Raymond. He didn't deserve her.

In London Paul Raymond was best known for his theatres and cabarets that pushed the boundaries of good taste, at least in the 1970's. Naked women dancing with snakes was scandalous 45 years ago, but today we just find it amusing. In the rest of England he was better known as a publisher of men's magazines. Starting with Men Only, he later founded the magazines Razzle, Club and Fiesta. The magazines all featured his name on the cover beneath the logo, so we knew they were his magazines. It was obvious anyway. They were virtually clones of one another, all with semi-pornographic images. For a few years Men Only was the best selling men's magazine in Britain, outselling the foreign magazines Penthouse and Playboy. This changed when Mayfair was founded in 1966. Paul Raymond's magazines were based on the style of European hardcore magazines, even if they didn't go as far, but Mayfair was a very British magazine. It was a men's magazine version of the Page 3 feature, in style and essence. Even if the girls were completely naked, they still looked glamorous.

It was a thorn in Paul Raymond's eye that Mayfair was outselling him. In 1990 he finally managed to buy Mayfair. At that time I regularly bought Mayfair, and I remember how my heart sank when his name first appeared on the cover. The transition was fast. The first magazine was still in the old style, but from the second issue onwards it sank to the same level as all his other publications. He destroyed Mayfair.

Theatres and men's magazines made Paul Raymond famous, but they're not what made him wealthy. He invested in Soho, buying property when houses were cheap. This part of his career is only mentioned in passing, and the film makes no attempt to show us how he became a property investor. This was his true genius. The houses were worthless, in a seedy part of London where nobody wanted to live, but he knew that prices would rise. The increase in property values is what made him the richest man in England. His wealth didn't make him happy. He was named the richest man in England in December 1992, one month after his daughter Debbie died of a drug overdose. He never recovered from her death. He spent the last 16 years of his life in his apartment with the curtains drawn shut, apart from occasional contact with his grandchildren, Debbie's daughters. Maybe he could have been happy if things had happened otherwise, but without Debbie he was a sad billionaire.

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