Sir Roysten Merchant

Sir Roysten Merchant is a character in the British sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey. Sir Roysten is a businessman and media mogul, owning several media outlets and other companies. In the first episode, he buys Globelink News, where the staff fear that he will drive the channel down-market like all of his other media outlets. Sir Roysten is an unseen character throughout almost all of the series, and only appears in the final episode, "The Final Chapter". A cardboard cut-out image of him appears earlier in the series. The character's intitals, "R.M." are a reference to real-life media moguals Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell.

Globelink
When Sir Roysten takes over Globelink News, he begins to make the channel more sensationalist in order to attract more views and make more money for his business empire. One is his first moves is to hire Sally Smedley as a newsreader, despite the fact she has very little knowledge of current affairs. Sir Roysten, who is right-wing politically, also tries to see stories include that praise politicians that he supports, such as Margaret Thatcher. This resulted in him getting Thatcher to agree to be interview by Globelink by Sally, but the interview had to be cancelled when the station had a powercut.

Due to Sir Roysten being an unseen character, most of his actions are carried out by Gus Hedges, the chief executive of Globelink News. Gus's main tasks involve preventing anything embarrassing to Sir Roysten being broadcast. One example was a documentary about Sir Roysten's arms deals. Gus orchestrated plans to prevent the story being broadcast, even getting two members of parliament to attack Globelink's editor George Dent, in order to prevent the documentary being shown until after Christmas. He only succeeded after broadcasting a tribute to a journalist who had just died.

Eventually, Sir Roysten's business empire began to crumble, and as a result Globelink was shut down. There was also a suspicious fire at Globelink which was probably Sir Roysten trying to claim on insurance, but Gus denied this. Gus, despite his attempts to save the company, almost goes mad due to his failure. As a result, he goes to see Sir Roysten in person. He breaks into Sir Roysten's house, and confronts him, angrily telling him how much he has suffered for him. Sir Roysten gets rid of him, and contacts his maid, asking her, "Who was that man?" Sir Roysten is married to Lady Caroline Merchant, a novelist who often has extramarital affairs. However, Sir Roysten also visits prostitutes. Sir Roysten has three children, Octavia, Roy Junior, and Roystonia.

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