Cliff Stanford

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Cliff Stanford
Cliff-Stanford.jpg
Photo of Stanford
Born (1954-10-12) 12 October 1954 (age 67)
London, England

Cliff Stanford, an internet entrepreneur from Southend-on-Sea, was a co-founder of Demon Internet, the first Internet Service Provider in the United Kingdom for individual subscribers.

Early life[]

Clifford Martin Stanford was born on 12 October 1954 and grew up in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.[1][2] His father was a civil servant, but left the family when Stanford was 11; his mother was a book-keeper.[1][3]

By the time he was 14, Stanford was beginning to show a flair for business. He devised a marketing scheme to win a newspaper sales competition at his part-time job. He had learned book-keeping by helping his mother with her work and left school, aged 16, to join an accountancy firm.[2][3]

Career[]

Demon Internet[]

Main article: Demon Internet

In the early 1990s Pipex began marketing leased line internet connections for £20,000 a year. After recruiting 200 subscribers willing to pay a "tenner a month" for dial-up internet access, in 1992 Stanford co-founded Demon Internet, the first Internet Service Provider in the United Kingdom for individual subscribers.

Based in Finchley, north London, and initially equipped with eight modems and a single leased line, the company grew quickly, particularly after the appearance of the World Wide Web in 1993. By 1996 Demon Internet had 50,000 subscribers and more than 4,000 modems.[4]

Redbus Investments[]

Following the sale of Demon Internet to Scottish Telecom in 1998 for £66 million, Stanford founded , a venture capital firm involved in film production and a variety of other ventures. Redbus Investments provided seed capital for a number of investments including Redbus Interhouse and Redbus Film Distribution. After a boardroom fall-out at Redbus Interhouse, he resigned in June 2002.[1]

In 2003, whilst attempting to gather information about possible wrongdoings by the board of Redbus Interhouse, Stanford discovered and exposed more than £34m of assets of Dame Shirley Porter[5] This resulted directly in her repaying £12m to Westminster Council.[6]

In September 2005 Stanford was convicted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 of intercepting emails belonging to John Porter, son of Dame Shirley and then chairman of Redbus.[7] Despite pleading guilty, Stanford claimed that what he had done was legal as "someone on the inside ... put in a redirect".[8] He was given a suspended sentence, ordered to pay a fine of £20,000 and, in a later hearing, was denied leave to appeal.[9]

Personal life[]

Stanford has a son, Tony, and as of 2000 was in a relationship with Sylvia Spruck Wrigley.[10]

Chess[]

Stanford is a chess enthusiast. He sponsored a Redbus knockout Grandmaster chess event each Easter in Southend since 1999. Following the death of his uncle, , who had for many years organised the annual Southend Easter chess congress, Stanford inaugurated a Jack Speigel Memorial Invitational Tournament, also at Easter and in Southend. The first Redbus event and the first Speigel Memorial event were each won by James Plaskett.[11]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c Everett 2005.
  2. ^ a b Marks 1998.
  3. ^ a b Cassy 2001.
  4. ^ "Even a millionaire has his demons". The Independent. 15 January 1996. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  5. ^ Telegraph 2005a.
  6. ^ "BBC NEWS – UK – Politics – Porter pays £12m to Westminster". BBC.
  7. ^ "silicon.com Demon founder pleads guilty to email snooping". Archived from the original on 3 April 2012.
  8. ^ "silicon.com Cliff Stanford to appeal email snoop verdict". Archived from the original on 3 April 2012.
  9. ^ Smith 2005.
  10. ^ Amy Vickers (19 December 2000). "Demon founder laughs off 'stripper' reports in Sunday newspaper". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  11. ^ "In memory of jovial Jack". The Telegraph. 29 March 2005. Retrieved 7 July 2017.

Reference bibliography[]

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