It is tempting to say that celebrity portrait painter and artist Alan Hydes has led a Jekyll And Hyde life.

Up to the age of 40, the Birmingham College of Art first-class graduate enjoyed the high life in London as a television presenter and director.

He was on the box presenting Afternoon Plus for ITV with the likes of Mavis Nicholson, and he came up with the idea for the charity fundraising Telethon.

He had gold cards for London’s most glittering watering holes – Tramp and Stringfellows.

“I would find myself going out to dinner with Sophia Loren, and the next night I would be dining with Dustin Hoffman,” he says.

“I once went out to dinner with Mick Jagger. David Bowie came into the restaurant – Langhams, near the Ritz, David Hockney designed the menus – and then the co-owner, Michael Caine, brought over Joan Collins to join us.”

He met Jagger again recently on the exotic island of Mustique where the Rolling Stones singer-songwriter has two houses.

But then the Yorkshire-born son of a greengrocer decided to stop commuting to London during the week at the emotional expense of his wife and young son.

Alan came back to Bradford (he spent 25 years of his life here, at Apperley Bridge) and began to produce children’s programmes for Yorkshire Television.

Then he picked up his brushes and painted portraits of Jilly Cooper, Denis Healey, the late Shipley actor Bryan Mosley and other Coronation Street stars. He made three art series for YTV in the 1990s, one of which, about painting portraits, was networked on ITV.

These programmes earned him several hundred thousand pounds which he invested in a run-down property in the millionaire village of Deia, Majorca.

Poet and author Robert Graves used to live there; Andrew Lloyd Webber has a home there as well; Bob Geldof likes to holiday there. Alan still has stars in his eyes to that extent.

A couple of years ago, he confessed to being under enormous pressure with commitments to make programmes, produce books and finish artistic commissions. The strain was making him feel unwell.

Since then, he’s sold the Apperley Bridge house and now concentrates on living and working in his home in Spain eight or nine months of the year. The fruit of his artistic labours was seen in August at an exhibition of his work at Gallery Sa Tafona in Majorca.

The Minister of Culture saw it and offered him a show at the Pueblo Espanole Gallery in Palma.

“For me it’s great. The cultural magazines will all go along to do pieces. At the end of the day, I have to sell work to live. Therefore I live from year to year. I am incredible fortunate to be able to live for my painting,” he says.

Part of a previous exhibition at Sa Tafona sold out in a matter of hours.

Alan says: “I had an olive tree sequence, seven in all. Andrew Lloyd Webber bought them all. They had very strong colour. Some of them were 6ft tall. I could have sold them ten times over.

“Then a woman from the City in London came in and bought all the swimming pool pictures and a man bought six paintings of sunflowers.

“I have never known anything like it in my life. It all happened in the space of about four hours. People who visit the exhibition have wealth; money doesn’t matter to them.”

Alan looks a lot better than the last time I saw him in Saltaire. Against the backdrop of blustery rainclouds, his peach suntan, orange trousers and red shoes remind me of the warmth we rarely had during the summer.

“I’ll get up at six in the morning and paint until it gets too hot. Then I’ll carry on until midnight. Once you get on a roll, painting gets more exciting. Whenever I go back to Deia it takes two or three days to get the feeling back. Once it starts I don’t want to do anything else other than paint,” he says.

Alan’s home and studio on Deia are located on the side of a range of mountains from which he can look down on a panoramic view of a rocky bay and the sea beyond. The sunset is often spectacular.

“I live out of the village,” he says. “When I open my shutters of a morning, I look down at the bay and it’s very very beautiful. I couldn’t find a better working environment. I have a place with privacy that is very conducive to work. I work long hours but I don’t disturb anybody.

“The great thing is the mountains are all around. Everybody that comes to Deia talks about the spiritual quality of the place.”

Mind you, they can afford to. Deia’s hotel, La Residencia, was voted the best in Europe. It used to be owned by Richard Branson and is now part of the company that owns the Orient Express. A night’s residence will set you back about £1,500.

Diana, Princess of Wales, was a visitor. Hollywood actor Harrison Ford and The Godfather and Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola stayed there.

They went to Alan’s exhibition a couple of years ago and came close to buying a picture or two.

Although Alan is well known for painting portraits of the great and the good and, unlike his Yorkshire compatriot David Hockney, is open to commissions, he relishes the freedom he enjoys to paint what he likes.

More of Alan’s work can be seen on his website alanhydes.com.