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As the long-running host of the ITV talent show Opportunity Knocks from 1964 until 1978, Hughie Green was widely regarded as the nations' uncle thanks to his genial, friendly on-screen persona. Lena Zavaroni, who found fame on the show, described him as "a great big granddad". However off screen, he was reportedly a far less palateable persona who was notorious for being a "serial womaniser", with a personal life marked by numerous affairs and fathering at least five children outside his marriage.

If there was any doubt as to his indiscretions a friend of the presenter, Noel Botham, put paid to those when he gave an astonishing speech at Green's funeral following his death in May 1997, aged 77 from cancer. Addressing 100 mourners, including the star's two children from his marriage and his grandchildren, at Golders Green Cemetery, north London, he told mourners that allegations he had sex with women on his hit show Opportunity Knocks were untrue. "Hughie was accused of having secret affairs with female contestants but he didn't need to, because he had four very capable mistresses on the go and a couple more on the side," he announced.

He continued delivering a bombshell that would rock the British entertainment world. "He had a daughter, a love child. She is now one of the biggest-known names in British TV today."

The following Sunday, Botham, who was a journalist, would reveal in the News Of The World that the child was Paula Yates - one of the biggest stars in the country.

Her mother was Heller Thornton, a former showgirl, whose real name was the far more ordinary Elaine Smith. She was married to Jess Yates, the presenter and producer of Yorkshire Television's religious programme Stars on Sunday, and Yates had always believed he was her father.

Her true parentage was subsequently proven by a DNA test and Green's daughter Linda Plentl told The Telegraph in 2008: "Paula definitely didn't want to believe it - and why should she? We did the DNA tests and she was convinced it was going to be negative and I hoped for her sake it was. But I knew in my heart it was true."

Paula was born in 1959, which means she was conceived while Green was still married to his first wife, Montreal socialite Claire Wilson. The couple had married in 1942 and had two children. But even Green's own children described their home life as "highly dysfunctional".

Thornton wasn't his only affair during his marriage and he seemingly often had several mistresses on the go at once - at the time of his death he was said to be juggling four!

Green and Wilson separated in 1961 but didn't formally for divorce until March 1975, after he started an affair with a woman called Gwen Claremont. She, in turn, was the sister of an earlier lover, Pat. Gwen Claremont, later committed suicide by setting fire to herself after their affair ended.

A ladies man until the end, Green's final partner for the last five years of his life was Christina Sharples, who was the widow of his long-term musical director Bob Sharples, who had died in 1987.