Derek Laud
Encyclopedia
Derek George Henry Laud (born 9 August 1964 in Chelsea) is a former British political adviser and Government Relations specialist, who has advised the Bank of England, The Securities and Investments Board, British Steel and Takcare PLC. He is a one-time Conservative
parliamentary candidate
, who achieved celebrity status during his run as a contestant in the 2005 series of the UK
TV show Big Brother. He is a regular TV and Radio Broadcaster and writes regularly for the Mail on Sunday Newspaper. He also has extensive business interests and serves on numerous boards.
, gained some notability as the only black member of the Conservative Monday Club
, for whom he produced, in October 1984, a Policy Paper entitled The Law, Order and Race Relations, under the auspices of the Club's Immigration and Race Relations Committee. He subsequently became a researcher and special adviser, working for Conservative
Members of Parliament
and Government Ministers in the mid-1980s. He previously worked in Private Equity Finance for Sir John Beckwith CBE, and was a director of numerous companies owned and controlled by the Pacific Group. Today he is the co-founder of the New City Initiative (NCI) and its Executive Director.
The NCI comprises 23 independent asset management companies with combined assets under management of £200 billion. He is Director of Wealth management company Stanhope Capital LLP, and sits on the Advisory Board, of which Lord Browne of Madingley(former group CEO of BP), is Chairman. Derek is also an advocate for the leading Gambling addiction Charity Gamcare, and The Dogs Trust to which he donated money won from his appearance on Celebrity 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' with Edwina Currie who was his co contestant. on Monday 4 April 2011 the Financial Times carried an article about Laud's ideas for a social stock market exchange, which they described as his 'brain-child' and during the piece further asserted he was 'well connected'. Laud argues that the social stock market exchange would create Prime Minister David Cameron's ideal of a Big Society. WWW.ft.com 'lead by example on social investment' by Pauline Skypala. Laud is a long standing family friend of Samantha Cameron's family and a personal friend of David Cameron and attended their wedding at Ginge, in Oxfordshire.
During his career, Laud has contributed to speeches for several well-known Conservatives including, it is said, Margaret Thatcher
, Michael Heseltine
and even Alan Clark
. He is briefly mentioned in both John Major
's autobiography and Alan Clark's diaries.In 1990 he was Campaign aid to the Rt. Hon. John Major's leadership election campaign. Moving on from Westminster, he was employed in the City of London
in equity finance. He established a political lobbying company, Ludgate Laud, in the early 1990s, which was eventually sold to a WPP company, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
As a parliamentary lobbyist, Derek Laud was mentioned in the House of Commons
by Labour MP
Martin Linton
in his maiden parliamentary speech
. Laud made history by becoming the first and only black person to have been appointed Master of Foxhounds in the New Forest, Hampshire, where he has had a home for many years. Laud's long term friend's Sir John and Lady Mortimer are fellow enthusiastic hunt supporters and he had a front row seat at Mortimer's Memorial service, alongside Edward Fox, actress Emelia Fox and the Duchess of Cornwall.
, Laud was selected as Conservative candidate for Tottenham
, a constituency with a very large nonwhite population that has been represented by black Labour
MPs since 1987
, but he stepped down shortly before the election citing "business reasons".
He met Michael Gove and Boris Johnson whilst still undergraduates and was approached before Johnson, to be London Mayoral Candidate by David Cameron's chief Strategist, Steve Hilton and the Conservative Party Chairman, Francis Maude MP. He declined to stand.
He is a regular and popular debating champion, and has spoken at a wide variety of events.
Hunt.
Laud has a wide circle of friends in the Conservative Party. In 2001, he provided an alibi
for his friends Neil
and Christine Hamilton
when they were falsely accused by Nadine Milroy-Sloan of sexual assault.
and celebrity, Chris Eubank
.
Laud was the tenth person to be evicted from the Big Brother House after losing in a head-to-head with Eugene Sully.
on a charity edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
on 17 September 2005.
During the Conservative Party conference in October 2005, he commented that most politicians (with one exception) would not succeed on "Big Brother", saying "Good looks are very important and David Cameron
is very attractive."
Laud appeared on BBC's Question Time
which was held in Newbury, Berkshire in November 2005. His political views, which some characterise as populist right-wing, tended to polarise people for or against him. Laud said, speaking in favour of longer pub opening hours: 'I think as adults - and responsible adults at that - we should be able to determine that (when to drink) for ourselves. ... I think that essentially what we've got to be doing here is to encourage people to take responsibilities for themselves and get the state out of our private lives.' About education in Britain he said: '44,000 people this year at 16 years old left school without a single GCSE - that is a national disaster. So where is Blair's radicalism? He will fall short of his place in history if he doesn't live up to the radicalism of Asquith in 1908 and Clement Attlee in 1945 and Thatcher in 1979 if he doesn't get this right. He has to take on these people who've got this taboo about the private sector having any part in education, and I deplore it.'
Graham Norton
, on The Bigger Picture, asked his audience to take a good look at Mr Laud "because you'll probably never meet another black gay Tory."
He makes regular TV and Radio appearances and is frequently on Sky News, The Alan Titchmarsh show, and Radio 5 live. Laud is a regular feature writer for the Mail on Sunday, in addition to holding numerous other Charitable and non Charitable positions.
He has written extensively for The Daily Mail on Sunday for many years and is particularly popular as a tennis writer at Wimbledon every year. He is a competitive sportsman and enjoys a wide range of sporting activity and his friends include many top playing, men and women professional tennis players.
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
parliamentary candidate
Prospective parliamentary candidate
Prospective parliamentary candidate is a term used in British politics to refer to candidates selected by political parties to fight individual constituencies in advance of a general election. This terminology was motivated by the strict limits on the amount of expenses incurred by an actual...
, who achieved celebrity status during his run as a contestant in the 2005 series of the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
TV show Big Brother. He is a regular TV and Radio Broadcaster and writes regularly for the Mail on Sunday Newspaper. He also has extensive business interests and serves on numerous boards.
Early career
Laud, who is openly gayGay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, gained some notability as the only black member of the Conservative Monday Club
Conservative Monday Club
The Conservative Monday Club is a British pressure group "on the right-wing" of the Conservative Party.-Overview:...
, for whom he produced, in October 1984, a Policy Paper entitled The Law, Order and Race Relations, under the auspices of the Club's Immigration and Race Relations Committee. He subsequently became a researcher and special adviser, working for Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
Members of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
and Government Ministers in the mid-1980s. He previously worked in Private Equity Finance for Sir John Beckwith CBE, and was a director of numerous companies owned and controlled by the Pacific Group. Today he is the co-founder of the New City Initiative (NCI) and its Executive Director.
The NCI comprises 23 independent asset management companies with combined assets under management of £200 billion. He is Director of Wealth management company Stanhope Capital LLP, and sits on the Advisory Board, of which Lord Browne of Madingley(former group CEO of BP), is Chairman. Derek is also an advocate for the leading Gambling addiction Charity Gamcare, and The Dogs Trust to which he donated money won from his appearance on Celebrity 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' with Edwina Currie who was his co contestant. on Monday 4 April 2011 the Financial Times carried an article about Laud's ideas for a social stock market exchange, which they described as his 'brain-child' and during the piece further asserted he was 'well connected'. Laud argues that the social stock market exchange would create Prime Minister David Cameron's ideal of a Big Society. WWW.ft.com 'lead by example on social investment' by Pauline Skypala. Laud is a long standing family friend of Samantha Cameron's family and a personal friend of David Cameron and attended their wedding at Ginge, in Oxfordshire.
During his career, Laud has contributed to speeches for several well-known Conservatives including, it is said, Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
, Michael Heseltine
Michael Heseltine
Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, CH, PC is a British businessman, Conservative politician and patron of the Tory Reform Group. He was a Member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001 and was a prominent figure in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major...
and even Alan Clark
Alan Clark
Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark was a British Conservative MP and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Trade, and Defence, and became a privy counsellor in 1991...
. He is briefly mentioned in both John Major
John Major
Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...
's autobiography and Alan Clark's diaries.In 1990 he was Campaign aid to the Rt. Hon. John Major's leadership election campaign. Moving on from Westminster, he was employed in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
in equity finance. He established a political lobbying company, Ludgate Laud, in the early 1990s, which was eventually sold to a WPP company, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
As a parliamentary lobbyist, Derek Laud was mentioned in the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
by Labour MP
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
Martin Linton
Martin Linton
John Martin Linton is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Battersea from 1997 to 2010.-Early life:...
in his maiden parliamentary speech
Maiden speech
A maiden speech is the first speech given by a newly elected or appointed member of a legislature or parliament.Traditions surrounding maiden speeches vary from country to country...
. Laud made history by becoming the first and only black person to have been appointed Master of Foxhounds in the New Forest, Hampshire, where he has had a home for many years. Laud's long term friend's Sir John and Lady Mortimer are fellow enthusiastic hunt supporters and he had a front row seat at Mortimer's Memorial service, alongside Edward Fox, actress Emelia Fox and the Duchess of Cornwall.
Parliamentary candidacy
In the 1997 General ElectionUnited Kingdom general election, 1997
The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...
, Laud was selected as Conservative candidate for Tottenham
Tottenham (UK Parliament constituency)
Tottenham is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.- Boundaries :...
, a constituency with a very large nonwhite population that has been represented by black Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
MPs since 1987
United Kingdom general election, 1987
The United Kingdom general election of 1987 was held on 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the British House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive election victory for the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the 2nd...
, but he stepped down shortly before the election citing "business reasons".
He met Michael Gove and Boris Johnson whilst still undergraduates and was approached before Johnson, to be London Mayoral Candidate by David Cameron's chief Strategist, Steve Hilton and the Conservative Party Chairman, Francis Maude MP. He declined to stand.
He is a regular and popular debating champion, and has spoken at a wide variety of events.
Subsequent activities
Derek Laud had long been an enthusiastic fox hunter, and in 1999, he became the Master of Foxhounds for the New ForestNew Forest
The New Forest is an area of southern England which includes the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in the heavily-populated south east of England. It covers south-west Hampshire and extends into south-east Wiltshire....
Hunt.
Laud has a wide circle of friends in the Conservative Party. In 2001, he provided an alibi
Alibi
Alibi is a 1929 American crime film directed by Roland West. The screenplay was written by West and C. Gardner Sullivan, who adapted the 1927 Broadway stage play, Nightstick, written by Elaine Sterne Carrington, J.C...
for his friends Neil
Neil Hamilton (politician)
Mostyn Neil Hamilton is a former British barrister, teacher and Conservative MP. Since losing his seat in 1997 and leaving politics, Hamilton and his wife Christine have become media celebrities...
and Christine Hamilton
Christine Hamilton
Christine Hamilton is a British television personality and author, and the wife of former British Member of Parliament Neil Hamilton who was Minister for Corporate Affairs between 1992-1994....
when they were falsely accused by Nadine Milroy-Sloan of sexual assault.
Big Brother
Laud's background and audition videos for Big Brother showed him with his friend, British ex-boxerBoxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
and celebrity, Chris Eubank
Chris Eubank
Chris Eubank, Lord of the Manor of Brighton is a retired British boxer who held world titles at middleweight and super middleweight...
.
Laud was the tenth person to be evicted from the Big Brother House after losing in a head-to-head with Eugene Sully.
After Big Brother
Laud partnered Edwina CurrieEdwina Currie
Edwina Jonesnée Cohen is a former British Member of Parliament. First elected as a Conservative Party MP in 1983, she was a Junior Health Minister for two years, before resigning in 1988 over the controversy over salmonella in eggs...
on a charity edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (UK game show)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a British television quiz show which offers a maximum cash prize of one million pounds for correctly answering successive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty...
on 17 September 2005.
During the Conservative Party conference in October 2005, he commented that most politicians (with one exception) would not succeed on "Big Brother", saying "Good looks are very important and David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
is very attractive."
Laud appeared on BBC's Question Time
Question Time (TV series)
Question Time is a topical debate BBC television programme in the United Kingdom, based on Any Questions?. The show typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer questions put to them by the audience...
which was held in Newbury, Berkshire in November 2005. His political views, which some characterise as populist right-wing, tended to polarise people for or against him. Laud said, speaking in favour of longer pub opening hours: 'I think as adults - and responsible adults at that - we should be able to determine that (when to drink) for ourselves. ... I think that essentially what we've got to be doing here is to encourage people to take responsibilities for themselves and get the state out of our private lives.' About education in Britain he said: '44,000 people this year at 16 years old left school without a single GCSE - that is a national disaster. So where is Blair's radicalism? He will fall short of his place in history if he doesn't live up to the radicalism of Asquith in 1908 and Clement Attlee in 1945 and Thatcher in 1979 if he doesn't get this right. He has to take on these people who've got this taboo about the private sector having any part in education, and I deplore it.'
Graham Norton
Graham Norton
Graham William Walker, known by his stage name Graham Norton , is an Irish actor, comedian, television presenter and columnist...
, on The Bigger Picture, asked his audience to take a good look at Mr Laud "because you'll probably never meet another black gay Tory."
He makes regular TV and Radio appearances and is frequently on Sky News, The Alan Titchmarsh show, and Radio 5 live. Laud is a regular feature writer for the Mail on Sunday, in addition to holding numerous other Charitable and non Charitable positions.
Return to politics
Derek Laud has recently expressed an interest in returning to politics in light of the MPs' expense scandal. He has also begun to blog on the Telegraph.He has written extensively for The Daily Mail on Sunday for many years and is particularly popular as a tennis writer at Wimbledon every year. He is a competitive sportsman and enjoys a wide range of sporting activity and his friends include many top playing, men and women professional tennis players.