Author: Telegraph Obituaries

Richard Northcott, who has died aged 77, was a serial entrepreneur in DIY, furniture, pet food, jewelery and pubs – and for a while, a Hollywood film producer whose name was attached to one of the boxes -office sensation in the 1980s, the erotic epic 9 ½ Sundays.A restless dealmaker with a well-developed taste for the high life, Northcott was generally more interested in financial possibilities and strategic gambles than in the products and services his businesses offered. But after he sold his first winning venture, a chain of DIY superstores, for £20 million, he was “sitting on a boat”…