The links between Owen Oyston, William Roache and Stuart Hall
Board meetings of Ridings Publishing Company Limited and its subsidiaries and Oystons Limited must have featured some interesting conversations as at them three well-known men were eligible to attend. Those three men, as of today, variously have served a jail sentence for rape, been convicted and await sentencing for 14 charges of indecent assault and await trial for two counts of raping a 15 year old.
The linchpin that links this North-West based threesome is the businessman and founder of both companies, Owen Oyston. Said to be worth £105 million, Oyston began his career as an actor and appeared in Granada Television’s Crown Court. His time on the stage and screen was brief and instead this miner’s son opted to go into the estate agency business. Oyston’s Estate Agents became the biggest privately owned firm in the UK in the 1980s and in 1987 was sold to Royal Insurance for around £37 million days before the stock market crashed. Since then, other interests that he has invested in and owned have numbered radio stations, modeling agencies, Blackpool Football Club and substantial landholdings.
Twice married to the same woman, Vicki Burns, Oyston was arrested in February 1995 in relation to nine charges, including four of rape. He was eventually convicted on one charge of rape and served three years of a six-year sentence. To this day still, Oyston continues to vehemently deny the offence.
Oyston relaunched Oystons Estate Agency when he founded the company Oystons Limited in June 2004. The firm has offices in Blackpool, Bolton, Cleveleys, Fleetwood, Leyland and Preston. Both the former television presenter Stuart Hall OBE and Coronation Street actor William Roache MBE became directors of Oystons Limited and another of Oyston’s companies, Ridings Publishing Company Limited, publishers of The Lancashire & North West Magazine and the Yorkshire Ridings Magazine, on 5th September 2006. At the time, Roache commented:
“I am delighted to be joining the Oystons team. It’s refreshing to see such professionalism and the determination of the staff to be the best in the industry”.
Little is known of the day-to-day involvement of the two television personalities in the companies in the time since, but the Ridings Publishing Company filed a loss of £2,027,246 in 2011 and Oystons a loss of £302,214 in 2011 and a loss of £601,538 in 2010.
Both companies might also lose two directors in the near future too. We will be watching the Companies House register with interest and unlike certain segments of the media, we will report on it openly.
View The Lancashire & North West Magazine’s website at: http://www.thelancashiremagazine.co.uk
View the Yorkshire Ridings Magazine website at: http://www.yorkshireridingsmagazine.com
View the website for Oystons Estate Agency at: http://www.oystons.co.uk