Secret life of a bitter billionaire:

For years, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen hid his decadent lifestyle so why is he now telling all... and turning on Bill Gates?

By Tom Leonard
Last updated at 6:29 PM on 25th April 2011

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• Super yachts, a collection of war planes, Impressionist masterpieces and star-studded parties a feature of lavish spending
• Autobiography accuses Gates of trying to swindle him out of fortune while he was sick with cancer

Microsoft recently celebrated its 36th birthday.

The occasion was not marked with bright smiles and felicitations, but with ugly scowls and recriminations between the two men who could have been blowing out the candles together.

News of a seismic clash between the empire's founders will have come as a shock to many.

Not so much the rift, but the fact there were two of them — and that the company that revolutionised the world of computing was set up by anyone other than Bill Gates.

In happier times: Paul Allen enjoys the company of his former friend Bill Gates at a Portland Trail Blazers basketball game, but the pair are at loggerheads now

And that seems to be precisely Paul Allen's point in writing an autobiography — published this week — that has finally pulled him out from his former partner's shadow and exposed the abiding tensions between them.

The media fracas began when an extract from Idea Man: A Memoir By The Co-founder Of Microsoft appeared in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

In it, Allen painted a less than flattering portrait of Bill Gates, with whom he co-founded Microsoft in 1975, as a slave-driving micro-manager who publicly belittled co-workers.

'To anybody who disagreed with him he would reel out his favourite insult: “That's the stupidest f****** thing I've ever heard!”,' Allen recalls in the memoir.

Gates would jeer at colleagues if they wanted to take time off, Allen adds. He also claims that his former friend and colleague attempted to swindle him out of his fair share of the business, most notably in 1982, when Allen was suffering from cancer.

Low profile high roller: Allen does not have the profile of his old partner Gates but he is known to the stars, such as Paris Hilton for his lavish parties

This week, Allen admitted in an interview that Gates' demanding and confrontational style 'gradually destroyed our friendship and our ability to work together'.

The relationship never recovered, and Allen left Microsoft in 1983. Gates went on to create a fortune estimated at £35 billion and devote his life to philanthropy; Allen, whose accusations of foul play this month earned him the sobriquet 'the bitter billionaire' in the U.S. press, appeared to vanish completely and has spent the past 20 years as a Gatsby-esque recluse.

So obsessively private is he that even guests to his famously lavish parties have to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Indeed, the man — so reclusive he was once described as the 'Loch Ness Monster of the internet age' — garners far fewer headlines than one of his obscenely-proportioned yachts.

Unless you are a rock star who relishes playing at billionaires' birthday parties, a Hollywood actress in need of a free French mansion, or a supermodel looking for the ultimate yacht on which to sunbathe, you are unlikely to have even heard of Allen, the 'other man' in the Microsoft story.

If you are any of the above, though, you may well have encountered the shy, slightly dumpy, serious-looking man who stood out like a sore thumb at any number of the wild, star-studded parties that turned out to be his.

'My face is not well-known,' he admits.

'So if somebody runs into me at a party, typically they have no idea if I'm just one of the guitar players in the band or if I'm the host.'

He may be well behind his old sparring partner in the Forbes rich list — Gates is 2nd in the world while Allen has sunk to 57th on a trifling £8billion — but Allen punches well above his weight in opulence, spending incredible sums to enjoy one of the most lavish lifestyles of this age.

Specky, wiry Gates may look more the part, but 58-year-old Allen acts the part to perfection of the computer nerd suddenly given more money than anyone could possibly spend.

In Microsoft's early days, Allen provided the technical vision while Gates was the business brains.

Even so, Allen has long had to put up with the unflattering moniker of 'the accidental zillionaire', a reference to the fact that virtually all his money came from the rocketing share value of Microsoft after he left.

He owns spectacular homes in France including a villa at Cap Ferrat, in London's Holland Park, and in New York.

The founders: A 1978 photo of the 11 people who started Microsoft with Bill Gates on the left of the front row and Paul Allen on the right

His main residence, outside his home town of Seattle, features an art gallery stuffed with Impressionist masterpieces, a basketball court lined with Renoirs and Monets, and an underground car park where he keeps a huge collection of sports cars.

He has his own hangar at Seattle's airport where he keeps his various jets, including two Boeing 757s and a Challenger 601 and another — in deference to a childhood spent making model airplanes — where he keeps 15 flyable planes from World War II.

They include a Curtiss Tomahawk, a Messerschmitt 109, a Grumman Hellcat and a Spitfire.

But neither the houses nor the planes hold a candle to the yachts. Allen has three of them, each vast and crewed to the hilt.

His flagship, the 414ft Octopus, has eight levels, a crew of 60 including former U.S. Navy Seals, two helicopters, seven boats, a remote-controlled vehicle that crawls across the ocean floor, a recording studio and a ten-man submarine where the Beastie Boys recorded their last album.

The Octopus alone, the world's biggest when he bought it, costs £12 million a year to keep up and £483,000 for a full tank of fuel.

Lavish: Paul Allen's yacht Octopus, pictured here in Beaulieu, has eight levels, a crew of 60, two helicopters, seven boats and a recording studio where the Beastie Boys recorded their last album

For Allen, it's a small price to pay to get the likes of Mick Jagger, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz and Paris Hilton on board.

Insiders say Allen has few close friends, although he is devoted to his widowed mother, Faye, 85, and sister, Jody, 53.

Many of the celebrities who throng his parties are simply friends of friends, they say. He has relied on the media mogul David Geffen and the actress Carrie Fisher to introduce him to Hollywood and Dave Stewart, the former member of the band The Eurythmics, to do the same in the music world.

His propensity for party-giving may be Gatsby-esque, but looks-wise Allen is no Robert Redford. He remains terminally uncool, snipe those who wolf down his champagne and caviar canapés.

Acquaintances are pleasantly surprised to find Allen is not the usual aggressive 'alpha male' billionaire. Still, sadly people don't seem to go to Allen bashes for the host's bonhomie and sparkling conversation.

Allen is apparently so socially gauche that if a conversation takes a direction he doesn't like he just walks away.

Girlfriends: Socially awkward Allen once dated tennis star Monica Seles

One guest told Allen's biographer, Laura Rich: 'He's not particularly gracious or particularly witty or particularly funny . . . he's not good at being desperately interested in what other people are saying.'

Allen has never married, but he has certainly had girlfriends. Although he was once romantically linked with Jerry Hall, who joined him on his yacht in the south of France shortly after her break-up from Mick Jagger in 1999, the dalliance — if there was one — was short-lived.

He also once dated tennis star Monica Seles.

The maudlin songs he wrote with titles such as Rhythm Of Hearts and Kingdom Of The Lonely for his rock band, Grown Men, are believed to have been his way of coping with the break-up many years ago.

Non-famous girlfriends report being treated rather less sensitively, several saying he unceremoniously dumped them without explanation and further contact.

In 1998, Allen ended up in court after Abbie Phillips, who he had employed to run his film and TV production company, Storyopolis, accused him of sexually assaulting her.

He denied the charge and the case was settled out of court, but not before her lawyer had accused him of mistreating four other women — 'developing crushes, lavishing gifts and vacations on, and then firing, married female employees'.

Women say he has nice, kind eyes and is 'sweet', even if he has the pallid complexion of someone who spends too much time on his computer.

Some report being terrified by his much fiercer sister, Jody, who appears to function as his gatekeeper. And well she might, given the size of his fortune.

Romance may be complicated, but Allen is on surer ground entertaining en masse.

His parties are the stuff of whispered conversations even among the top tier of Hollywood. 'No one entertains like that any more,' says one Hollywood producer.

'He is like a Medici prince, a grand seigneur, someone who entertains in the old style.'

In 1998, Allen celebrated his 45th birthday with a week-long luxury cruise to Alaska that cost him £5.5 million. Guests — 'friends' might be going too far — included Jerry Hall, Francis Ford Coppola and Candice Bergen.

Hobby: Allen loves playing the guitar and is pictured here on stage with the American band Presidents of the United States of America

Two years later, he trumped that with an £8 million extravaganza in which he flew 200 guests, among them Sir Paul McCartney and Tom Hanks, to Helsinki and then on to St Petersburg at the cost of £860 per head per night.

Robin Williams can hardly be alone in admitting, after being flown to Allen's masked ball in Venice, that he didn't know the man at all. 'I guess it's a “Hi, I'm a billionaire, let's have a party” kind of thing,' he said.

Once, he lent Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie his French villa while she was pregnant.

If there's only one obvious quid pro quo to Allen's famous generosity, it seems to be a musical one.

At least one of his musician guests always ends up performing at his parties and Allen usually joins them on stage, the Jimi Hendrix devotee thrashing away on his guitar while guests politely cheer and think of the goodie bags.

The post-cruise ones included cashmere socks, rucksack, travel rug and binoculars. Jagger repaid Allen's hospitality by letting him perform a guitar solo at his own 56th birthday party.

Party boat: Hundreds of guests enjoy one of the outlandish events aboard the Octopus

Allen spent £148 million just building a Frank Gehry-designed rock museum in Seattle.

Playing guitar is one of his two great passions. The other is sport. He might like shooting a few basketball hoops, but he's also keen on owning entire sports teams.

His collection includes the U.S. football team the Seattle Seahawks, the Seattle Sounders soccer team and basketball's Portland Trailblazers.

Allen attends almost every Trailblazers home game, memorising every statistic and barraging the manager with text messages during the game. In 2007, he reportedly offered £50 million for Southampton FC, but the deal — probably to the manager's everlasting relief — never happened.

Other interests more closely fit the geek stereotype. A Star Trek fan, he owns Captain Kirk's chair from the original TV series which now sits proudly in the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame he created in Seattle.

He wants to be a spaceman, too, and even has his own rocket, the SpaceShipOne, which won him a prize for putting the first privately-funded craft into space.

Star power: Allen with Star Wars creator George Lucas, one of the many film personalities he likes to keep company with through his contacts

Can it be any surprise to learn that Allen is a major contributor to the SETI, or Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, project?

As for Microsoft, he now concedes his old firm is way behind the curve, saying the company has suffered a 'decade of missed opportunities' while Apple, Google and Facebook stormed ahead in their respective fields.

But he focuses his venom on Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, saying their actions are questionable at best and 'evil' at worst.

Meanwhile, his own post-Microsoft business career has been anything but stellar.

While the singleminded Gates devoted himself to advancing Microsoft, Allen, who met Gates while they were both pupils at a Seattle private school, branched out, showering money on dozens of ventures.

Always overshadowed by Gates in how much money he could earn, Allen has now been trumped in how much he is willing to give away, too

He has sunk many millions into more than 50 companies, but his track record has been generally pretty poor, dragging him down the rich list (he was once at number three) and reinforcing the 'accidental zillionaire' reputation he is said to loathe.

He was a major investor in DreamWorks, the Steven Spielberg Hollywood studio, though yet again he was trumped by Gates, who got far more attention a week later when he announced Microsoft was putting £61 million into the studio.

But at least it got Allen, an inveterate movie buff, smart invitations to Hollywood parties.

Allen may have taken a very different path to his Microsoft partner, but he will always be measured against him. Always overshadowed by Gates in how much money he could earn, Allen has now been trumped in how much he is willing to give away, too.

While Gates and his wife Melinda have now given to charity about 35 per cent of their fortune — some £17 billion — Allen has given away only three-quarters of a billion of his.

More than a decade ago, he once complained to his friend the author Douglas Adams that he felt frustrated with his wealth.

'I've spent money on jets, boats. I don't know what to do next,' he said.

Adams replied that he wanted to bring together a group of 'brilliant thinkers' to dream up some great philanthropic endeavour. Would Allen throw in a billion dollars, he asked.

Adams died and it never happened.

As Allen remains adrift on his luxury yachts and his spendthrift playboy existence, some must wonder if it ever will.

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