dominicmidgley.com

The online guide to his books and journalism

Dominic Midgley is a British journalist and author who specialises in biographies of prominent business people and celebrities.

Michael O'Mara, 2004

ABRAMOVICH, The Billionaire from Nowhere, the first biography of the Russian oligarch who bought Chelsea FC, was published on 4 October, 2004. Written with Chris Hutchins, the bestselling biographer of the Duchess of York, the book is the most comprehensive look yet at Britain's richest man. It is published by HarperCollins' sporting imprint, Collins Willow.

THE Billionaire from Nowhere was Serialised by the Mail on Sunday newspaper and a camera crew from Sky Sports filmed the launch party at a Belgravia restaurant and interviewed the authors. The event was also covered by The Guardian and The Evening Standard but it was when The Sun ran a piece on page three under the headline, ‘Red Rom, The Musical’, that the book became the talk of Moscow.

Chris Hutchins had discussed turning the book into a musical with his friend Billy Gaff, former manager of Rod Stewart, and The Sun ran the story accompanied by a mock-up of a promotional poster with the title ‘The Show Moscow On’. It listed a number of wittily retitled old standards, including Putin On The Ritz, and proposed Darren Day to play Abramovich.

The story was picked up by the Russian Press, running on the front page of the Moscow Times, and Hutchins gave interviews to a stream of Moscow-based media outlets.

The revised and updated paperback edition of
Abramovich,
The Billionaire From Nowhere –
see left –
comes out on 3 May, 2005.
(Harper CollinsWillow, £7.99)

>> BORN FOR THE JOB, A collection of amusingly apt names emerged as a spin-off project from the now defunct Scurra column in the Daily Mirror, was published by Michael O'Mara on 25 June, 2004. Two years earlier, Steen and Midgley ran the following short item in 'The Scurra': ‘The press officer at Playtex, makers of Wonderbra, is called Kate Bosomworth.' We had already featured a couple of mentions of people whose names uncannily matched their jobs, including Alan Cheesman, the cheese-and-wine party organiser, and Simon Burns, the MP who was worried about the effects of sunburn on the British electorate. Yet it was the mention of Ms Bosomworth that really caught the imagination of Scurra readers and, in the weeks and months that followed, nominations flooded in on a daily basis. Each one we published prompted a another spate of contributions, of which this compilation is the result.

HarperCollins, 2004

Mainstream Publishing, 1998

Smith Gryphon, 1996