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When Felix Dennis opened his address to the London Business Forum (LBF), it was in feverish tones, hunched over the lectern at the bfi London IMAX cinema, his mouth pressed so close to the microphone that we could hear the drool.

"There are only three valid reasons for anyone not to be rich if they live in a Western democracy," he said: "(1) I do not want to get rich; the thought appals me; (2) I want to get rich, but I have other, urgent priorities; (3) I am too stupid to get rich. There are no other valid reasons. None. All other reasons given are bogus alibis, or they are excuses."

This was just the kind of strident view that the 300-strong audience - most young, wannabe entrepreneurs - had come to hear. Dennis is most famous for his eponymous publishing empire, which includes magazines such as Maxim and Auto Express. But, as he would remind us later, his real fortune came from the $750m sale of a computer equipment retailer called MicroWarehouse. "The magazine business [is] a 12-15% margin business. It's rubbish," he said. "Do you think I would allow a child of mine to go into the magazine business? You must be out of your mind."

Dennis was here ostensibly to promote his new book, How to Get Rich. Indeed, he appeared exactly the same in the flesh as he did on the book's front cover: tan suit; orange tie and socks; white shirt; chunky tortoiseshell glasses; wild grey hair and beard. However, he was also here to deliver a warning.

The book, he said, was not written out of vanity but out of a sense of noblesse oblige. It was intended to give hope to those who dreamed of wealth, persuading them that anyone could acquire the "knack" of making money, and providing them with some of the tools they would need along the way. More importantly, he said, it was intended to demonstrate that the process of getting rich usually transforms people, and that those who succeed in becoming rich usually end up disliking themselves as a result.

Of course, he added, "very few people in the world are ever very happy for very long. I'm a poet, and I know that. And if we're going to miserable for much of the time, then I would argue it's much better to be rich and miserable then poor and miserable. Or in the words of the jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, 'Honey, I been poor, and I been rich. Trust me, rich be better.'"

Dennis's reference to himself as a poet was completely serious. He issued his key advice on getting rich, for example, in the following way:

Good fortune? The fact is<br />The more that you practise,<br />The harder you sweat, <br />The luckier you get.

Ideas? We've had 'em <br />Since Eve deceived Adam,<br />But take it from me, <br />Execution's the key.

The money? Just pester <br />A likely investor.<br />To get what you need<br />You toady to greed.

The talent? Go sign it.<br />But first, wine and dine it.<br />It's tedious work<br />With a talented jerk.

Good timing? To win it<br />You've got to be in it.<br />Just never be late<br />To quit or cut bait.

Expansion? It's vanity!<br />Profit is sanity.<br />Overhead begs <br />To walk on two legs.

The first step? Just do it<br />And bluff your way through it.<br />Remember to duck!<br />Godspeed and good luck!

The other key ingredients to success, Dennis argued, are: self-belief ("If you don't believe in yourself then why should anyone else?"); perseverance ("Most of the people that got fantastically rich in the Western world in the last couple of hundred years were not very clever, [just] absolutely determined"); and, of course, hard work ("By god, when I was 25 years old I could work 16 hours a day, go out, have a meal - curry, couple of beers - straight home, bed. Up, back, 16 hours, out, curry, two beers, bed, up, out...").

He also urged the audience to have no fear. "When Charles Dickens was writing, not only could you be imprisoned for debt, you could be tortured for debt," he pointed out. "[Now] they can't torture you, they can't throw you in prison. And all that can happen is your friends laugh at you - and your enemies. Well a pox on them. Where's the downside?"

The audience was also delighted by his suggestion that the only reason to ever work for a large company was industrial espionage. "You're there as a spy," he said. "You're there to suck the marrow out of everything they've got, learn it as fast as possible, buzz off, get a bit of capital and start applying it for yourself. I mean, who wants to sit there making [someone else] rich? This is insane." His own method of retaining talent was, he said candidly, to promote people as rapidly as possible: "In the end, if you keep on loading talent up, it will stay because it can't resist the challenge."

After a 20-minute speech, Dennis spent the next hour or so answering questions from the audience, with a mixture of practical wisdom and engaging eccentricity. For example, when one young woman asked what she should have in place before quitting full-time work and starting up a business, he said:

"It's no good you quitting... if you're going to have a husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, mother, moaning, whining, constantly sapping your confidence, constantly pouring negativity into your ear just to try and get you back to earning that nice, safe salary cheque. I understand - my own mother, even today, sometimes asks me when I'm going to get a proper job. So, you've got to clear the deck." We would later learn that when Dennis said "clear the deck", he meant: be ruthless with your time, and don't listen to anyone when they try to persuade you to quit - even those you hold dearest.

Of equal importance, he said, was having "a clear understanding of what it is you're trying to do". You must have a step-by-step plan to follow, which allows for contingencies. After that, he suggested, you should find some sacred space to visit on your own - in the middle of a forest, for example - and swear to yourself "I will not give in until they bankrupt me."

When the young woman in the audience revealed she had been in her present career for about five years, Dennis's response was emphatic: "You're ready to start," he said. "Right now. This minute. Even though you're going to continue working for them through Christmas so you can pay for the Christmas presents - even though you're going to do that, you should make that decision now that it's over."

Hearing all this bluster in isolation, one could be forgiven for thinking that Dennis was a soulless arch-capitalist, and indeed he admitted to moments of unseemly behaviour - admiring the panache of Robert Maxwell, for example, or bingeing on drugs and high-class prostitutes. However, he also demonstrated a countervailing streak of deep social responsibility. For example, he said he doesn't avoid tax, using the elaborate methods of other multi-millionaires, on the grounds that: "I will not cheat the people that live in this country. I pay my taxes even though I moan and whine about it." Indeed, the inside cover of his book was festooned with photocopies of cheques to the Inland Revenue, made out for sums as high as £w7.8m.

Dennis also argued that, in the pursuit of riches, it was important to "always pay the little people." If you do go bankrupt then you should "make sure that you end up owing the money to the banks and the big vendors with lots of money [but] make sure that the receptionist you employed gets paid," he said. "Make sure that you don't stiff anybody. Be as honourable as you can." Ultimately, he believes his foremost legacy will be the so-called "Forest of Dennis," a project intended to create the largest area of contiguous woodland in the UK, for which he has purchases tens of thousands of acres of land in recent years.

His conclusion to the event was a fitting culmination to all the eccentricity and entrepreneurial nous we had just witnessed. "Sometimes when I read French poetry... I cry," he said. "But when I'm making money, that doesn't apply. That doesn't count. I don't care if the guy in front of me has been to university or not. I don't care if he knows words like 'tripartite' or not. All I care about is this: 'How much money has he got? 'How much can I get?' 'What will I have to give to him to get it?' This is appalling. And believe me, being an entrepreneur is appalling. Capitalism is appalling. The only trouble is that it has vanquished every other system known to man. Now, eventually, we will all become a cross between Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. I'm sure of it. But not now, brothers and sisters. Not right now."