Spellbound by Mr Magic

His bywords have been escapism and entertainment. His critics argue that he knows what viewers want and - whether they should be allowed it or not - gives it to them. Who then, is the sinner?

In Hollywood, hunting ground to platoons of panegyrists, Spelling is Mr Magic, a saintly figure whose name should be spelled with a dollar sign. Indeed, Spelling is one of the richest men in the entertainment business, with estimates of his wealth ranging from $400m to the Fort Knox fantastic, so wealthy you can't imagine.

Spelling, who you might consider has a soul like Baywatch, is approaching his fifth decade as an image maker.

He believes he has simply had his finger on the remote control of what people have wanted to watch. If anyone else hits the button before him it hurts: ''I get a pang every time I see a successful show - I go. 'Dammit, why didn't we think of that?' ''

He usually has, from his flower-power crops of The Mod Squad to his Charlie's Angels jiggle detectives of the seventies and the long-running Dynasty, the perfect eighties show driven, like its players, by wanton avarice.

Recently, the Los Angeles Times, the house magazine of Hollywood, suggested of his myriad programmes: ''Taken collectively they can be read as a pop-cultural history of the late twentieth century America.''

As it turns out, Spelling himself might be the best, the most remarkable, story of all. His is one of rags to bitches.

At 73, when you might imagine the achievement decorating the plaques on his den walls would be contentment, he is aggressively programming with his first daytime soap (Sunset Beach on Channel 5), his upcoming saucy hymn to the flesh and flash (Pacific Palisades on BBC1 which is resurrecting Joan Collins as well as lines like ''How dare you...'' to prime time) and ongoing episodes of Savannah, Melrose Place, and Beverly Hills 90210 (Sky).

It's more of what-they-want television but Spelling is certain he is right and has the track record to support his thinking: ''The suicide rate in this country, if it weren't for TV, would be higher. We keep saying that our company's motto is that we do not make anything for the Beverly Hills or Bel Air circuit. We make it for people out there.TV is closer to them than the movies.''

He has never forgotten his own family life. He still dreams of it - in nightmares. He grew up in Dallas in poverty, the youngest of five children of Russian immigrants. His father was a sweatshop tailor, he was ostracised by other children as ''Jewbaby''. He shared a bed with his two brothers sleeping face to feet. ''My mother told us it was fun sleeping that way. I thought everyone did.''

Terrified of his environment, a target for other - always bigger - kids he spent two years in bed saying his legs would not work. Encouraged back to school, he graduated at 15 to working in garages and grocery stores.

Pearl Harbor changed that and he enlisted. In Europe, he was shot in the hand and leg and from his injuries got the idea for a short play which he wrote and produced.

Back in America the slightly built man with the Texas blur of an accent suffered in New York for three months before taking the bus to Hollywood. Signing with the same agent as Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson as an actor (including 123 episodes of Dragnet in which he says: ''I always played a deviate''), he made a living.

But it was as a writer and producer in the fifties that he began to establish himself. A lot of what he became had to do with these days.

He made friends and was helped by many established stars of 40 years ago. In turn, he would later help them with guest spots on his series like Hotel and The Love Boat.

It also influenced his decision to move from the anthologies - serious pieces of theatre on TV - to shows which would make him a rich man: ''The prestige was in anthologies.

''The money was in series. I chose the money. I had been poor too long.

''You can't judge poorness today by the poorness I knew.''

And still the work ethic persists. He puts in hours like a character from Dickens and lives like one from the pages of Harold Robbins.

For 11 years he was married to the late actress Carolyn Jones (Morticia in The Adams Family television series), but it ended just as his star was ascending. Nearly 30 years ago he met Candy Marer at a nightclub on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. He didn't know it then but that meeting on the most expensive shopping street in the world was an omen of things to arrive. She was 20 and an interior decorator. Three years later she was Mrs Aaron Spelling.

Today that means more than baubles like the D-flawless (highest grade), 40 carat, apple-shaped diamond the

size of a heavyweight boxer's knuckle bought from the estate of the Shah of Iran and known as ''The Ring'', for with the title comes status, power and, of course, crucifying envy.

The stories about him and Candy, their children - Victoria, 23, (Tori Spelling of Beverly Hills 90210) and Randy, 20, (Sunset Beach) - are a mix of myth and fact. One glaring fact stands at the corner of Mapleton Drive and Club View in Holmby Hills: The Manor, the Spelling home.

The property Spelling bought for $10.25m once belonged to Bing Crosby but was torn down and replaced with one of the world's biggest single-family dwellings - 123 rooms, 56,000sqft - and there were suggestions that a home bigger than the White House was just a tad excessive.

''It bugged me until my wife finally said to someone: 'He didn't steal it and he didn't inherit it.' And since I don't fly the house is more than just a house to me. We don't travel and it was Candy's dream. I hated it when it was being built; it seemed so ostentatious and everything but the day that it was ready I went over it and it had every stick of furniture, every wall had paintings, and from that moment it's been just a very warm, warm house.''

And there is nothing unsightly on the horizon. During construction, Candy Spelling had the foundations of the home dropped so she would not see the ''Robinson's'' sign of the nearby department store from the master bedroom.

Spelling will not fly despite time in B25s during the war. It is completely understandable. While in the Service in 1943 he was taken off a plane only two minutes before it was airborne. The plane crashed in Akron, Ohio, killing everyone on board.

When the family took ''our little vacation in Europe'' a few years ago they paid $300,000 for a private rail car to take them, a maid, butler, security man, and 80 pieces of luggage across American to meet the QE2 to sail on to seven suites at the Dorchester in London and the Orient Express, and similar accommodation at the Plaza Athene in Paris.

Candy, who always carries a jeweller's loupe and often wears $4m worth of gems to lunch, pointed out: ''They have plastic knives and forks, they microwave everything, the roses are gone from the table. We set out to look for a private car, which is a feat in itself because they are only 25 or 30 that exist in the United States and some owners don't want to rent them. We finally found one through photographs and we sent Steven Dtork who worked for us to Brownsville, Texas. These nice people who owned the car, the Stillmans, rented it to us. It was wonderful. It had three bedrooms with a little living room and a den-bar area and a dining room that seated 12.

''The help's quarters were in the other half of the car behind the kitchen. It came with a porter, chef...''

The Spellings parade their wealth. It often catches up with them in jokes and stories. Spelling shrugs it off. His wife looks ''magnificent'' in jewels so why shouldn't he give them to her? But, as the story goes, Candy once told her husband: ''Let's cool it on jewels for a while and get into art.''

As the tale goes on next day they bought a Monet.

They keep a home out at the beach in Malibu and there was the day when the butler, face polished, uniform smartly pressed, strode out of it with a cordless telephone on a silver platter and walked straight into the Pacific where Spelling and his children were frolicking in the surf.

And there were the times at the beach when Candy sent out a nanny to plant precious shells in the sand so her daughter could find them during walks on the beach. And the time a refrigerated truck from Colorado transported snow overnight so the kids could have a real ''white'' Christmas in California.

When they are in Las Vegas, the slot machines are brought to their suites where they serve caviar - flown each day from Hollywood - with the Cristal champagne. The chocolates also come by plane from Los Angeles as Candy says: ''The desert heat somehow alters the taste of chocolate - it just isn't the same.''

Which, suddenly, her husband's TV world wasn't in 1989. Dynasty, after nine years, was cancelled by a network seeking more ''realistic'' dramas like thirtysomething and LA Law.

The ABC network which had an exclusive deal with Spelling for 18 years said it no longer wanted to be nicknamed the Aaron Broadcasting Company and their arrangement was scrapped.

But Spelling was hurt - and bemused. And also confident the programming pendulum would swing back his way.

It did. Fox TV approached him about a show which would attract a young audience. The tentative title was Class of Beverly Hills.

''I said: 'What the hell do I know about high school kids?' They said: 'You have one - why don't you look in your daughter's bedroom?' ''

Tori Spelling helped but it was her father's instincts about what drove popular prime time drama that turned Beverly Hills 90210 into a world-wide success. He was asked to repeat the trick and, again for Fox TV, produced Melrose Place but 90210 remains the ''baby''.

''We entertained but we also said a lot. We dealt with subjects like drinking and drugs and safe sex.''

Spelling has ''discovered'' actors like Luke Perry and also Heather Locklear, who worked for him on Dynasty and TJ Hooker at the same time and now plays the bitch on Melrose Place. He says: ''Most people when they see actors and actresses they listen and look. I look at the windows. Bette Davis said that if you look in somebody's eyes and you see your own reflection - those are mirrors, they aren't windows.

''You've got to get what I call 'stardust people' who have windows so you can see through to their heart.''

He also brought Joan Collins back: ''I've always said that snakes get the best lines. Joan was a huge boost to us on Dynasty. The trick is that she really loves her children so she's as bitchy as could be but when a child is sick or in trouble she is a good mother.''

Now Collins is reunited with Spelling for Pacific Palisades, which promises more of Alexis Colby and loving and lusting and looting, bickering and sneering and the rest of the usual washboard of suds.

The other attraction is Lucky Vanous, 35, who until Spelling cast his spell was best known for the strip-off Diet Coke advertisements. Collins will lose the power shoulder-pads of Dynasty for a nineties look - again created by Spelling's favourite designer, Nolan Miller.

''Joan is looking fabulous,'' says Spelling, adding: ''Alexis Colby is back on TV.''

And, more definitively, so is he. The clock might be ticking for Aaron Spelling but the pendulum, as he predicted, keeps swinging.

Tori Spelling is now a veteran of Beverly Hills 90210 and several TV films made by Spelling Entertainment (valued at $1500m) and her brother, Randy, a resident hunk of Sunset Beach.

Candy Spelling is not nagging for a role. She already has a much better one in real life.

And Aaron Spelling?

He says: ''I'm convinced my epitaph will be: 'He did Charlie's Angels and was Tori Spelling's father.''