Paul Raymond
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Raymond is the alias of Geoffrey Anthony Quinn, who was born on 15th November 1925 in Liverpool, England and raised by his mother in Glossop. He was educated by the Christian Brothers. He regards himself as Irish. He adopted his current name in 1947.
He is an English pornographer, property developer and owner of the Raymond Revuebar strip club and several major English erotic magazines such as Razzle and Mayfair. Models featured in his magazines have included Joanne Guest, Shanine Linton, Aria Giovanni and Veronica Zemanova. Raymond regularly appears on UK rich lists and is a widely believed to be a billionaire.
Raymond started out by opening the Revuebar in 1957, which continues to the present day (see[1]). He has sometimes been presented as being the English equivalent of Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt in the USA, but is quite different in nature, partly due to the more restrictive obscenity laws of the UK. But like them he has contributed to the debate over these laws.
In recent years however, his fortunes have waned due to competition from magazines that are not as explicitly sexual (see [2]).
Raymond long ago diversified beyond pornography, and has many millions tied up in property and real estate, most notably in Soho.
He is listed at #62 on the Sunday Times Rich List 2004 and valued at £600 million, although it has been claimed that this is a fraction of his wealth.
