Selim Jehan Shah (born 20 January 1944), commonly known as Eddy Shah or Eddie Shah, is a Manchester-based businessman, the founder of the then technologically-advanced UK newspaper Today in 1986, and of the extremely short-lived tabloid The Post, and current owner of the Messenger Group.[1]
Shah was born in Cambridge of an English mother with Spanish and Irish blood, and a father of Persian origin, but brought up in India. Shah was educated at a Scottish co-educational independent boarding school, Gordonstoun, and at both Haywards Heath Grammar School and Haywards Heath Secondary Modern School, at Haywards Heath in Sussex. He then attended a Brighton crammer, where he obtained seven GCE 'O' Levels.
He confronted the trade unions at his Warrington print works and Manchester news offices in 1983. As the owner of six local newspapers, he defeated the print unions after national strikes that went on for seven months - despite receiving death threats. He was the first person to invoke Margaret Thatcher's Anti-Union Laws to force the unions to the bargaining table. The Wapping dispute followed three years later.
Shah is also the author of several novels including The Lucy Ghosts (1991), Ring of Red Roses (1992), Manchester Blue (1993), and Fallen Angels (1994). After a break from writing, he returned in 2008 with a thriller entitled Second World.
He now owns and runs golf courses, leisure centres and hotels, including the Wiltshire Golf and Country Club, Royal Wootton Bassett. He is building 44 holiday homes with his wife, actress Jennifer White Shah with whom he has three children.,[2] at the Wiltshire.[3]
On September 21 2011, he was arrested with four other individuals by the Metropolitan Police "in relation to allegations of sex with an underage girl eight years ago".[4]