Green was born in Marylebone, London, to a Scottish father, Hugh Aitchison Green, a former British Army officer from Glasgow who made his fortune supplying canned fish to the Allied forces in the First World War, and an English mother, Violet Elenore (née Price),[2] from Surrey, the daughter of an Irish gardener.

The family had a home in Meopham, Kent, where the children lived with their mother, who took frequent lovers, while their father did business from the Savoy Hotel, and often stayed there.

[7] Green became a household name in 1955, with the ITV quiz show Double Your Money, which had actually originated some years earlier on Radio Luxembourg.

Rose, a chirpy 15-year-old Cockney junior accounts clerk, had won £8 answering questions on famous women and was invited back by Green to be a hostess.

It started as a UK-wide touring show produced for the radio, and one of Green's early finds was singer Frankie Vaughan, who came second as part of a duet.

[9] When the show transferred to television on the ITV network, first in 1956 and then again from 1964, it began the show-business careers of Les Dawson, Lena Zavaroni, Pam Ayres, and Mary Hopkin, among others.

Green, who possessed a pilot's licence, would fly the panel of judges between audition venues all over Britain, in his small Cessna aircraft.

It was released as a single in 1977, and partly seen as an open gesture of support for Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher; he was disciplined by Thames Television, but continued to make political comments.

[11] After his rather slow-paced and "end of the pier" entertainment-style shows were replaced with more active audience participation formats, Green tried presenting variants on the Opportunity Knocks theme in Ireland, Australia and in the USSR.

His catchphrase "I mean that most sincerely" was also mocked, to such an extent that it is sometimes mistakenly believed to have been invented by the impressionist Mike Yarwood, who was known for his impersonation of Green.

The family lived in a fifth-floor flat in Baker Street, London, although with Green's numerous affairs and self-obsession, including taking luxury holidays and often spending Christmas on his own, his children defined it as "highly dysfunctional".

After the separation from his wife, Green's drinking became more compulsive, while his affairs continued, even during the height of his fame presenting Opportunity Knocks.

In July 1993, after a lifetime of smoking a pipe, heavy drinking and latterly taking recreational barbiturates,[citation needed] Green was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, and admitted to the Royal Marsden Hospital, Chelsea, London.

[20] In The Sunday Telegraph of 3 February 2008, his daughter Linda Plentl said the new BBC drama about her father would reopen intolerable wounds.