At the height of his fame, opinions about the nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow were divided. Some thought he was cynical and exploitative, others that he was merely sleazy. Stringfellow, who has died aged 77 from cancer, took all in his stride, objecting only to being called a pimp, and preferring that his long, stringy, dyed-blond cockscomb of a hairstyle should not be described as a mullet. In his tight silk shirts and even tighter trousers (worn without underpants – on the beach he preferred leopard-print thongs) he cheerfully regarded almost any publicity as good publicity.

Stringfellow claimed to have lost count of the number of women he had slept with, besides his three wives, modestly reckoning about 2,000 over a 50-year career. He regularly courted journalists (even from the Guardian) with champagne, apparently candid quotes and, occasionally, tours of his bedroom, with its piles of fluffy toys and overhead mirror, in the small flat above his club.

“Owning nightclubs was my only talent, not being able to sing or play the guitar,” he confided to the Independent in 1999. “So moving to London specifically to be famous was my only option. I identify with showbiz types because I am on a par with them and understand their needs.”

Indeed he did. From the time he booked the Beatles in 1963, after their first hit, to play in Sheffield for the then princely sum of £85, his clubs abounded with celebrities. In the 60s and 70s the likes of the Kinks, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner and Rod Stewart turned up to play at his northern dance halls; from the 80s onwards they arrived to be seen, to ogle and be ogled at his eponymous Covent Garden club in London. Jack Nicholson had to be dissuaded from joining the pole dancers. Madonna turned up, as did Tom Jones, Elton John, Marvin Gaye, even Professor Stephen Hawking, on different occasions. When Margaret Thatcher briefly attended a Tory Party fundraiser there, the topless dancers were given the night off.

‘I identify with showbiz types because I am on a par with them and understand their needs’: Stevie Wonder, left, and Marvin Gaye, centre, at Stringfellows, 1981.

Photograph: Alan Davidson/Silverhub/Rex/Shutterstock

Stringfellow was the oldest of four sons of a Sheffield steelworker, James, and his wife, Elsie Bowers. He grew up in the care of his mother and his aunts, sharing a bedroom with his brothers in a tiny terrace house with an outside toilet, while his father was away in the navy during the second world war. He failed his 11-plus and left Sheffield central technical school at 15 to work at a series of jobs: in the steelworks, as a merchant seaman, and as a door-to-door salesman until, at the age of 22, his theft of some of his employer’s carpet stock earned him an eight-week jail sentence.

Released from prison, Stringfellow persuaded a local vicar to let him to use the church hall for his first club, the Black Cap, just in time for the 60s pop boom, though he had to hire a bigger hall for the Beatles concert. The Black Cap was followed by the King Mojo club – sold to the Mecca organisation at a large profit – and then the Millionaire club in Manchester. By 1980 he was ready for London and opened Stringfellows.

Other London clubs would follow: he took over the Talk of the Town near Leicester Square, returning it to its original name, the Hippodrome; later, in 2006, came the Cabaret of Angels, a topless, table-dancing club. What these all featured were, for want of a better term, scantily clad young female dancers and an older, mainly male clientele, able to afford the drinks prices – one of the advantages, he told magistrates worried about rowdiness, was that you had to be as rich as Sir Philip Green to afford his cocktails. There were also innovations, including all-gay nights at the Hippodrome on Mondays, at one of which a lion, hired for the evening with its trainer, escaped and rapidly cleared the dance floor before being recaptured.

An attempted expansion of his clubs to the US, in New York, Miami and Beverly Hills, in the late 80s and early 90s, ended in expensive failure, Stringfellow complaining that the clientele all preferred mineral water and salad to champagne and steak and liked to get to bed early.

Peter Stringfellow in 2006. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

As he grew older, though still bedding girls many years his junior – “I can’t remember all their names and I hope they don’t remember me” – Stringfellow began spending less time at his London clubs. Six nights a week in Covent Garden became three, and increasingly he spent more time at his home on Mallorca. By that time he was insisting to journalists that what he ran were gentlemen’s clubs. “There isn’t money outside London for live nude dancers,” he told the Mail on Sunday in 2015. He explained the appeal of his clubs: “Here no man is ever rejected. He doesn’t have to chat her up. A beautiful girl is paying him attention – that’s a powerful thing for a man.”

What they were paying for were precisely timed 210-second lapdancing routines and the right to to sit for an hour with a nude dancer. Stringfellow, in his 70s, insisted: “My clients are older but no one comes in who is older than me. They’ve lost interest by their 70s.”

He claimed: “Immigration makes us a better country,” and said his Romanian and Polish dancers had a much stronger work ethic than British ones. Previously a lifelong Conservative, he criticised Brexit and even joined the Lib Dems in protest.

Stringfellow was married three times. He deserted his first wife, Brenda Williams, his teenage sweetheart, in 1965 after five years when their daughter, Karen, was a baby. His second marriage, to Coral Wright, with whom he had a son, Scott, lasted 24 years but ended in divorce in 1989. In 2009 he married a ballet dancer, Elaine (Bella) Wright: she popped into his club after dancing in The Nutcracker with the English National Ballet at the London Coliseum just down the road. After that he claimed his roving days were over. The couple had two children, Rosabella, born in 2013 and Angelo, in 2015.

Stringfellow was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008, which he attributed as a lifelong non-smoker to 50 years spent in smoky nightclubs. He claimed he was trying to keep a low profile in the private hospital where he was being treated, only to be told by his wife: “It would help if you didn’t wear a leopard-print dressing gown.”

She and his four children survive him.

• Peter James Stringfellow, nightclub owner, born 17 October 1940; died 7 June 2018