Independent and Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev may be well known for his plush facial hair, but a Spectator profile to be published on Thursday attempts to reveal the man behind the beard by asking whether the oligarch’s son is the “saviour of print journalism” or “just a socialite let loose with daddy’s chequebook”.
The Life magazine cover profile, by deputy editor of the Spectator, Freddy Gray, includes glowing recommendations from celebrity friends such as Stephen Fry (“endlessly teasable and humorous”) and Rachel Johnson (“a wise old beard on young shoulders”) as well as his staff (Independent editor Amol Rajan describes a man with a “terribly good memory” who can be “terrifyingly sharp”, while Standard editor Sarah Sands praises his “exquisite taste”).
The devil is in the detail though and we learn all sorts of things about the Independent owner. First, there’s the bullfight he pulled out of at the last minute – a decision that didn’t stop him from donning the “suit of lights” normally reserved for professional matadors (a move described by his guide in the venture, writer Alex Fiske-Harrison as “like a journalist turning up to a war zone dressed as a four-star general”).
He also uses private jets to ferry shirts from one city to the other, apparently. According to one unnamed source, Lebedev dispatched a jet from Italy to Britain to pick up a favourite shirt, only to decide he didn’t want to wear it for that night’s soiree. Lebedev’s staff however, say there’s absolutely no truth to this suggestion.
Then there’s Lebedev’s penchant for using his papers to campaign on issues such as the plight of the world’s elephants or homeless veterans on London’s streets – and the impact that has on his journalists.
As one Standard hack who felt the need to come up with pachyderm-related content put it: “We are a London paper, and it was hard to make the point that there aren’t that many elephants in London.” And when the government decided to back his homeless veterans campaign, Lebedev was so keen to break the news the Independent’s management ordered journalists to sit on their hands, sending an email reading: “Very importantly, Evgeny wishes to tweet [the news] first. Once he has done others may re-tweet etc.”
But perhaps the route to respectability isn’t too far off. Rajan has repeatedly denied the Lebedevs dictated the Indy’s shock decision to back the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition at last May’s election, and says his boss “is not really into party politics”.
Yet whatever the truth, the Conservatives seem happy to give him the credit. As a “senior Tory source” told the Spectator: “For getting the Indy on side, he deserves a bloody peerage.”
