REUTERS

Former US president Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton was being besieged by 25 women a day who flocked to see him even before he became president.

A TV biography of the former US leader claims he was already a huge hit with the ladies during his initial bid for the governorship of his home state, Arkansas, in the 1970s.

Former senior aides said that women were “literally mesmerised” and swarmed around him “like flies to honey”.

The claims were made in documentary The Clinton Years, in which former staffers speak for the first time about their sense of betrayal over his affair with Monica Lewinsky in 1998.

Long before that, however, Clinton’s sexual appetite was already causing problems.

Among those interviewed is his political aide Betsey Wright, who presented Mr Clinton with a list of girlfriends he had to deal with before standing for governor. Another aide remembers “25 women a day” coming to see him as he campaigned.

Marla Crider, who had an affair with him, tells the documentary that women were ‘literally mesmerised’, adding: ‘It was like flies to honey.”

By the time he got to the White House, however, he appeared to be having difficulty controlling himself.

He told his pollster Dick Morris: ‘Ever since I got to the White House I have had to shut down my body.’

When Miss Lewinsky arrived as one of his interns, his self-control evaporated completely.

Ken Gormley, a White House legal expert, says there were “these sparks flying between them from the first moment when they saw each other”. And when the affair became public his staff were deeply upset because he had lied to them and lied “to a lot of people”.

The 65-year-old was impeached but acquitted after telling the world he ‘did not have sexual relations with that woman’.

The documentary, on US TV network PBS, comes after the publication of a book by former White House intern Mimi Alford, which detailed her affair with John F Kennedy in the 1960s. - Daily Mail