SATURDAY PROFILE: Steve Bing

The poor fellow seems intent, in sowing the seed of his own financial ruin - how on earth will he manage the maintenance on all these payments?

Easily, of course, as we all know by now. This is the archetypal poor little rich kid, who through the long winter months was derided in the British tabloid press for almost as long as one of his former girlfriends, Elizabeth Hurley, was pregnant. Now, after making every attempt to shuffle off his parental responsibilities, he has been brought "Bing to Rights" (in the words of the Mirror) by another paternity test which has established beyond doubt that his genetic fingerprints are on the Hurley baby.

Yet, even now, there are signs of a Bing fightback, and with a family fortune estimated at anywhere between 270 million and 2 billion, he has all the money he will ever need to help him to win friends and influence people.

In a widely trailed "official" profile for Vanity Fair magazine, the new father will emerge as a man more sinned against than sinning, in this peculiarly amoral fable for our times. His sister, Mary, a social worker, will accuse Ms Hurley of having "reproductively taken advantage" of her 37-year-old brother, adding, on cue, that Steve had been "snookered into being a parent".

For good measure, Mary also uses the interview to defend her sibling from charges that he is the father of four-year-old Kira Kerkorian, after an affair with her mother, Lisa Bonder.

And that’s not all. Bing, a man rarely quoted directly even in the Hollywood gossip columns, emerges from the shadows to reveal that he is working on his next script, entitled Why Men Shouldn’t Marry, that he wants to marry some day and he hopes to father more children. "Kids, that is, that I voluntarily play a part in conceiving," he says archly.

He has endured a bad press in the past few months and a few slurs about his sexual habits. Plainly Bing believes it’s time for Ms Hurley to take a few knocks. One of those "fashion insiders" tells the magazine that when Hurley was the advertising face of Este Lauder, "within the company, she was called ‘Sleaz-E’ behind her back".

Then, we hear, there was that Vanity Fair party last year, when Hurley and Baywatch actress, Pamela Anderson, staggered past its editor, Graydon Carter. A staffer at the magazine said: "The pair made fools of themselves. They were dressed like trailer trash. Graydon is a bad enemy to make in this town and Liz has made lots of enemies."

All this name-calling represents the latest twist in a bitter public relations battle - but none of it will help to endear Steve Bing to his British critics.

This, after all, is the week when the happy news of his fatherhood was revealed. Yet, to his enemies, it will appear that the best Bing can do for his child is to pour scorn on the mother.

But then that seems to have been the Bing standard in many of his dealings with his former lovers over the past few months. According to friends, Hurley became pregnant after antibiotics which she was taking reacted with her contraceptive pill. But when she broke the news to her involuntary partner at his home near Los Angeles, Bing urged her to have an abortion. When she refused to do that, he suggested therapy, which she also declined.

Finally, when the pregnancy was made public in November last year, Bing’s cold rebuttal stated that the two "were not in an exclusive relationship when she became pregnant".

It seemed an ungentlemanly reaction, and not just to those highly-principled moralists among the British tabloids. The American magazine Newsweek greeted news of the imminent birth with scorn for the budding father. "A child with Hurley would be an uncharacteristically successful production for Bing, whose other attempts to make a name for himself in Hollywood have all failed. Tape the birth. It won’t be his first project that goes direct to video."

But it was far worse on this side of the Atlantic, where one UK newspaper published Bing’s phone number, urging the good folks of Britain to ring "beastly Bing" to voice their views on his behaviour.

Should their readers run short of ammunition, the paper followed up with "ten dastardly things about sleazeball Steve Bing", including: "He’s not so hot himself. He may be set to inherit 400 million from his tycoon dad, but in the trouser department he carries nothing but short change, according to previous lovers."

STEPHEN Leo Bing was born on 31 March, 1965, to property heir Peter Bing and his wife, Helen. Bing senior inherited his fortune from Grandpappy Bing, another tireless grafter in the dangerous world of real estate. Peter has been a benefactor of universities, including Stamford, one of the great Ivy League establishments, though his generosity failed to benefit his son and heir.

That’s not to say young Steven did not receive the best education money could buy, at the prestigious Harvard school in Los Angeles, before he enrolled at Stamford. But "Bing Wing" or not, he flunked out after a year and a half. The scholar’s life was not for him, though in that brief period, his buddies recall he had shown himself a keen student of movies and of beautiful women - and of movies with beautiful women in them.

He began to dabble in screenwriting, acting and producing, but in truth was often just a financier for the talented, beautiful crowd he immersed himself in. His credits are few, and usually derided - from television series (he wrote for the sitcom Married ... with Children) to movies. His 2000 remake of Get Carter, which replaced Michael Caine with Sylvester Stallone as the male lead, was lambasted in the press.

"He calls himself a writer, yet not many people have seen him writing," one Hollywood observer said. "It’s more like he spends all his time studying obsessively how to get women and keep all his relationships alive at once."

Still, at least he enjoyed some success in that area. Introduced by James Caan, for a while he was a regular at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, and hanging out with friends like Kiefer Sutherland and Rob Lowe, he fast established a rakish reputation as a man about town.

Indeed, according to one former lover, Tracy Richman, Bing was a "sexual predator" and began to mark out some celebrity notches on his bedpost. There was Farrah Fawcett - 18 years his senior - Uma Thurman, Naomi Campbell and Sharon Stone (with a gracelessness we have since come to expect, Bing was to deride Ms Stone’s abilities as a lover).

The Bing image gradually changed along with his ever-changing cast of celebrity partners. There had been a time when girls had been used to being picked up in a beaten-up car with their geezer of a man dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. But as the image of a Hollywood hotshot took hold, so did conspicuous consumption.

Once, Bing turned up at the chic Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles only to find the restaurant fully booked. He promptly hired a suite and had them all served dinner, with caviar, by room service, at a cost of 2,800.

Then, when his 3 million mansion in Stone Canyon, Beverly Hills, was burgled, he took a permanent suite at the prestigious Bel Air Hotel (for 2,000 a night) and bought all his meals from the hotel or local restaurants.

NOT all his wealth is spent on personal pleasure - far from it. Bing gave 3.5 million to the Democratic Party last month, the second largest donation in the history of the party which dominates politics in Los Angeles.

He has also helped to finance his old alma mater, Stamford University, and donated to a number of environmental groups. And - according to Vanity Fair - having met all those attractive women at the Playboy Mansion, he also helps strippers who are down on their luck.

Now there are other demands on his wallet and, this time, Steve is expected to play ball. Details of the visiting rights or the child maintenance costs have not been disclosed, although it is suggested that Hurley may not want any financial help from Bing. Instead, young Mr Moneybags is thought to be considering the establishment of a trust fund.

It’s the least to expect for Damian Charles who, in the eight weeks of his life, has been unknowingly surrounded by an unseemly squabble over his parentage. There’s no stigma in being born out of wedlock these days, and no apparent responsibility for parents to take a hands-on interest in their child’s care. Nevertheless, the shameful denials which have surrounded the birth of this child will forever be an indictment of his father.

And all the while, Bing’s latest movie, Night At The Golden Eagle, is ready to roll to audiences across America. Improbably starring the Welsh footballer, Vinnie Jones, it is, we’re told, a "gritty drama" promising "power, pleasure, joy".

The strapline reads: "One night can reveal a lifetime" - a dramatic enough irony in the unpleasant world of Steve Bing.

Factfile

Bing had an acting role as basketball player in the forgettable 1991 film The Dark Backward.

As executive producer, Bing has been involved with the much-derided US remake of a classic British thriller, Get Carter He directed another thriller Every Breath, which sank without trace in 1993.

Last year, on hearing Bing was going to be a father, Newsweek magazine advised: "Tape the birth. It won’t be his first project that goes direct to video."

In November last year, Bing flew the model Caprice across America so the couple could enjoy a one-night date in Tennessee.

Bing has filed a lawsuit for invasion of privacy against Hollywood mogul Kirk Kerkorian, alleging Kerkorian was behind attempts to dig through his rubbish for dental floss. It is thought Kerkorian was seeking DNA evidence to prove Bing is the natural father of his daughter Kira.