[4] In 1947, his father, a textile merchant, anticipated the flight that tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews were to take would soon make it difficult to avoid persecution and relocated his family to Finchley, north London.

[7] In 1965, Saatchi undertook his first advertising role as a copywriter in the London office of Benton & Bowles, where he met Doris Lockhart (later his first wife).

In the early 1980s, Saatchi purchased a 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m2) cement-floored and steel-girded warehouse at 98A Boundary Road in the residential London suburb of St John's Wood.

[1][6][16][17] At one point, the Saatchi collection contained 11 works by Donald Judd, 21 by Sol LeWitt, 23 by Anselm Kiefer, 17 Andy Warhols and 27 by Julian Schnabel.

His taste has mutated from American abstraction and minimalism to the Young British Artists (YBAs), whose work he first saw at Goldsmith's Art School.

His renown as a patron peaked in 1997, when part of his collection was shown at the Royal Academy as the exhibition Sensation, which travelled to Berlin and New York causing headlines and some offence (for example, to the families of children murdered by Myra Hindley, who was portrayed in one of the works), and consolidating the position of Hirst, Emin and other YBAs.

[20] Subtitled "Everything You Need To Know About Art, Ads, Life, God And Other Mysteries And Weren't Afraid To Ask", it presents Saatchi's answers to a number of questions submitted by members of the public and journalists.

From November to December 2009, he had a television programme on the BBC called School of Saatchi in which he gave young aspiring artists an opportunity to showcase their work.

[25] In December 1998, Saatchi donated 130 artworks to a Christie's auction that raised £1.7 million, creating scholarship bursaries at four London art schools.

[28] According to the Times Online, Saatchi is "reclusive", even hiding from clients when they visited his agency's offices and, as of February 2009, has only ever granted two newspaper interviews.

"[29] In the Sunday Times Rich List 2009 ranking of the wealthiest people in the UK, he was grouped with his brother Maurice, with an estimated joint fortune of £120 million.

[4] She was a native of Memphis, Tennessee,[31] and Kevin Goldman describes her as "a sophisticated woman who spoke several languages, knew a great deal about art and wine and who had graduated from Smith College and the Sorbonne".

[31] Saatchi's second wife was Kay Hartenstein (to whom he was married from 1990[33] to 2001[34]), an American Condé Nast advertising executive from Little Rock, Arkansas.

This was a double fronted seven-bedroom villa converted from its former use as a warehouse and 200 metres from Saatchi's contemporary art gallery in King's Road.