NY: Bill Clinton was besieged by 25 women a day who flocked to see him before he even got to the White House. A TV biography of the former U.S. President claims that he was already a huge hit with the ladies during his initial bid for governorship in his home state of Arkansas in the 1970s.
Former senior aides said that women were 'literally mesmerised' and swarmed around him 'like flies to honey'.
His appeal only grew by the time he became president - during which time he admitted he had been forced to' shut down my body' to avoid multiple indiscretions.
According to the Daily Mail, the disclosures were made in the forthcoming PBS documentary 'The Clinton Years' in which his former staffers speak for the first time about their sense of betrayal over his affair with Monica Lewinsky in 1998.
Long before that, however, Mr Clinton’s sexual appetite was causing problems.
According to the documentary, his political team realised it was a stumbling block during his failed run for Congress in 1974 in his home state of Arkansas.
Campaign manager Paul Fray said: 'You got to understand that at one time there was at least 25 women per day coming through there trying to find him and I’d tell them he was out on the road.
‘Lord it was bad. Bad, bad bad, bad bad.'
Marla Crider, who worked with Mr Clinton in Arkansas and had an affair with him, describes women as being ‘literally mesmerised’. She says: ‘It was like flies to honey.
‘He needed that, he needed that kind of adoration. I don’t think there was any question that Hillary was hurt whether it was me, or anyone else’.
Among those interviewed is Betsey Wright, Mr Clinton’s trusted political aide, who made a crucial intervention in his career in 1987 the day before he was due to announce his run for presidency.
She confronted Mr Clinton with a list of his previous girlfriends who he had to deal with.
Writer Gail Sheely said: ‘Just the day before the press conference he was going to announce that he was going to run, Betsey Wright, his ferociously protective campaign manager, sat him down with a list of names of women and went through one after the other.
'How many times? Where did you meet her? How likely is she to talk?'
Clinton said for each name that ‘she’ll never say anything’, but Miss Wright replied: ‘But you don’t know that!’
Miss Wright supposedly told Clinton: ‘The problem is we’re not just talking about you, we’re talking about your wife, we’re talking about your child. She said I don’t think you can run'.
Miss Wright tells the documentary: ‘It became clear it was not the time for him to do it. This was not the time.’
By the time he got to the White House in 1992, however, Mr Clinton appeared to be having even more difficulty controlling himself. And when Miss Lewinsky arrived as one of his interns, his self-control evaporated completely.
Ken Gormley, a legal expert working in the White House, tells the documentary that there were 'almost these sparks flying between them from the first moment when they saw each other'.
And when the affair became public Miss Wright says that his staff were deeply upset because he had lied to them and lied 'to a lot of people'.
On of Mr Clinton’s closest advisers, Dick Morris, tells the documentary: ‘When the Lewinsky scandal broke the president paged me and I returned the call.
‘He said: "Ever since I go here to the White House I’ve had to shut my body down, sexually I mean, but I screwed up with this girl.
'"I didn’t do what they said I did but I may have done so much that I can’t prove my innocence."
'I said to him that the problem that presidents have is not the sin, it’s the cover-up and you should explore just telling the American people the truth. He said: "Really, do you think I could do that?"
'I said let me test it, let me run a poll, so I took a poll... and I called him back and I said they will forgive the adultery, but they won’t easily forgive that you lied.'
Clinton, now 65, disregarded his advice and continued to conceal his relationship with Lewinsky.
In the end he was impeached but acquitted.
He did however remain very popular and left office with a 65 per cent approval rating, the highest exiting poll out of any U.S. President.
The documentary also features fascinating colour about the Clinton White House with aides describing his first year as 'chaos'.
The West Wing resembled a fraternity house with pizza boxes littering the floor as bullish young aides who did not even wear ties wandered in and out of meetings as and when they liked.
Summing up Mr Clinton’s presidency, U.S. journalist David Maraniss, tells the documentary: 'People always try to separate the good from the bad in Clinton and say that, if he had not done certain things, he would have been a great president.
'But you can't do that. Those were his major characteristics'.
Clinton’s former press secretary Dee Dee Myers adds: 'How many second chances does a person deserve? Clinton’s view is as many second chances as a person is willing to take.'
Hillary Clinton also features prominently in the film and she is credited with being the ‘mastermind’ of reviving his career in its early days.
When Penthouse model Gennifer Flowers claimed to have had a 12-year affair with her husband, Mrs Clinton' brought him back from the dead' with a robust TV interview in which she famously said she was not going to 'stand by my man' like the Tammy Wynette song.
Clinton political advisor Carol Willis says: 'Bill Clinton is a smart guy, a very smart guy but he will tell you that Hillary is much smarter than he is, she’s much tougher than he is, she’s more of a pragmatist.'
The documentary comes days after the publication of a book by former White House intern Mimi Alford which detailed her 18-month affair with former American president John F Kennedy in the 1960s.
In her book Miss Alford alleges that Mr Kennedy took her virginity in his wife’s bedroom as colleagues drank cocktails down the hallway.
She also claimed he once asked her to perform a sex act on a senior aide whilst he looked on.
