Club International

Porn king and property magnate Paul Raymond has died aged 82.

Raymond was credited with staging the first live striptease show in London and amassed an estimated fortune of £650million.

As he built his empire, he was dubbed the King of Soho and his stable of porn magazines included Razzle, Mayfair and Men Only.

He started in the business as a producer, touring a variety programme, the Vaudeville Express, around the country. Raymond got round a ruling by the Lord Chamberlain which banned movement by nudes on stage by getting the topless women not to move.

Exploiting a loophole which made private clubs exempt from official censorship, he opened the Raymond Revuebar strip club in Soho in 1958.

After an earlier failure, Raymond returned to porn publishing with Men Only in 1971 and his magazines became the first top-shelf glossies.

Paul Raymond Publications, the top-shelf magazine company whose titles include Men Only and Mayfair, blamed competition from the internet as it slid into the red in 2008.

The group recorded a pre-tax loss of £166,205 for the 12 months ending 31 December 2008 according to results filed at Companies House at the end of last week.

That compares with a profit of £1.4m the previous year. As recently as 2005, the company made annual pre-tax profits of £8.4m – down from £10.7m in 2004.

The company said: The decline ... continues a trend identified over a number of years, and is attributable to increased competition from other media sources, primarily internet-based sources.

The company also said that the cost of DVDs, which are now given away free with many of its titles, was making it more expensive to produce and distribute its magazines. Its directors did not recommend the payment of a final dividend.

The buzz on the streets is that Paul Raymond Publications has been sold.

The iconic publishers of men's magazines has featured such titles as Razzle, Mayfair, Club International and Men Only.

The word is hat the group have been split with a US company getting US interests and Trojan getting the UK titles.

Update: Owner's Club

29th August 2009. Based on article from business.avn.com

Magna Publishing Group has purchased Club Magazine and its sister publications from Club Media Inc., increasing the total number of titles it publishes to over 60. The deal also includes Club International, Club Confidential and Best of Club.

Magna Publishing Group already includes established magazine titles such as Swank, Genesis, Fox, Gallery, Velvet and Gent.

Genesis Editor-in-Chief Dan Davis has been named editor-in-chief of Club Magazine. Club is definitely one of the biggest men's titles and it definitely becomes our biggest title on the Magna roster, said Davis, who will continue to edit Genesis as well.

The acquisition is effective immediately. The first issues of Club and its sister titles under the Magna umbrella will be the January 2010 magazines, which are projected to be on the street in November.