The former West Ham joint chairman David Sullivan once described himself as a “collector of women, like some people collect stamps”.
“I can have up to three a day but some days I don’t have any – it depends how I feel and what else is happening,” he told a newspaper interviewer in 1989. “I have a desire to make love to most women.”
The billionaire businessman made a fortune from selling sex in the pre-internet world of adult magazines, films, telephone chat lines and newspapers filled with topless glamour models and teenage girls who had just turned 16.
Known as the “king of porn” by some in the industry, the 77-year-old is one of the country’s richest men, overseeing a media, property and publishing empire from an office in his 14-bedroom Essex mansion.
Now, an investigation by BBC Panorama and the Times has revealed allegations of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour going back decades.
Sullivan denies all the allegations, calling them factually incorrect and entirely false. In a statement issued on Saturday, he also criticised the BBC’s “fundamentally unfair” investigation.
As he faces accusations of abusing his position of power, how did he rise to such wealth and influence?
