WITH the financial system in meltdown, and the economy slowly heading in the same direction, you would have to be crazy to launch a new business. Wouldn't you? On the contrary, “the best time to get started is in a recession,” says Felix Dennis, a famously controversial British media tycoon. “This is when big and medium-sized companies retrench, which allows small firms and entrepreneurs a chance.”

Although he now runs a large, eponymous publishing company, Mr Dennis is taking his own advice. Although in June 2007 he shrewdly sold several of his magazines—including the “lads' mags” Maxim and Stuff—to private-equity at the top of the market, he still owns t he Week, a news magazine, and Viz, a rude comic, and has since juiced up his web strategy, launching several e-zines: e-mailed downloadable free content, which uses software that creates the effect of turning pages, as well as allowing other interactivity.

Rex Features

Felix Dennis

His portfolio of e-zines now includes i-GIZMO, which provides product reviews and was launched in March and Monkey, a slightly grown-up version of a lads' mag, which he describes as “even more idiocy, but this time animated and live.” On July 17th, he will launch an “aspirational motoring” e-zine, iMotor. This will build on his purchase in April 2007 of Octane, a print magazine that Mr Dennis describes in his characteristically earthy way as “classic car porn”.

It comes as no surprise when Mr Dennis says that he turned down the Donald Trump role in the British version of “The Apprentice”—“it stunk; it is hard enough without some bully telling you you're useless and you're fired”—for he is a magnetic character, not least because of his flaws. He curses constantly (infamously, he was the first man to say “cunt” on British television), writes and performs poetry, chain smokes and proudly cites a description of himself in the Times, a British newspaper, as an “engaging monster…reeking of sulphur.”

In America, the engaging monster has just published a memoir-cum-self-help-guide, “How to Get Rich”, which he says has done “really well” in the UK already. While now may be a good time to start a business, the main message of the book, he says, is to try to discourage people from becoming entrepreneurs unless they are deadly serious and driven to such an extent that they cannot stop themselves. This, he says, was his own experience; having been jailed for publishing obscenity in his magazine Oz, and then given a lighter sentence than his partners because the judge thought he was stupid, he determined to build a business empire to prove that slur wrong and to ensure he always had the money to hire the best defence lawyer.

He is convinced that any suitably serious, driven person, blessed with reasonable intelligence and living in a developed economy, who takes his advice will “get rich”, but that it will exact a terrible price. “If you are married, your spouse or kids will be sacrificed; you will be buying them presents laden with guilt. I've met many rich people and by and large their children are a mess.” The book, he says, was also his way to “try to figure out all the mistakes I've made.” For an entrepreneur, making mistakes is inevitable: “If you make three big errors in a year and get one thing right, you are doing well,” he says. Learning when to stop doing something is probably more important than coming up with a business idea. “You don't need a great idea, you need great execution. It's how you deal with failure that separates wannabes from gonnabes. The first rule of entrepreneurial success is 'Do not reinforce failure'.” Look at Lakshmi Mittal, now one of the richest men in the world, he says. “Go round the world buying crap steel companies. Where is the new idea there? What he's got is sensational execution.”

Despite what he anticipates to be his fourth recession—“we are talking ourselves into it”—starting in America, Mr Dennis remains bullish on the land of the free. “For the rest of my lifetime I'm betting on America,” he says, noting the country's “pervasive aura of optimism”. This he contrasts unfavourably with his motherland. “I can't change my country's bizarre and self-hurting culture towards entrepreneurial activity,” he complains, noting that after some modest improvement in the culture of entrepreneurship in recent years, “things have started going backwards again; there is a very strong feeling that people who create jobs and money are beyond the pale.” Unlike in Britain, in America “I've never met anyone who hates me because I have earned a few hundred million dollars.” Something all the economic doom-mongers in America nowadays should bear in mind. Rather than complain, perhaps they should each start a new business.