A new book claims that Vice-President Joe Biden upsets female Secret Service agents by swimming naked wherever he goes.

The book The First Family Detail by best-selling author Robert Kessler purports to tell the behind the scenes secrets of the two most powerful offices in the world as seen by their protection details.

Vice-President Biden, claims the book, is more interested in being seen as a 'regular Joe' than the second most powerful man in the world.

Vice President Joe Biden is more interested in being seen a a regular guy than the man who is a hearbeat away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

'Agents say that, whether at the vice president's residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,' Mr Kessler writes. 'Female Secret Service agents find that offensive.'

The naked swimming and the last-minute changes of schedule mean that being assigned to Mr Biden is seen as 'the second worst assignment in the Secret Service,' Mr Kessler writes.

The worst says the book is working for former First Lady and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mr Kessler, the author of 19 books, has been accused by Democrats of writing anti-Clinton and anti-Kennedy stories by using anonymous sources who by their very nature are hard to verify.

A spokesman for Secretary Clinton (above) told the New York Daily News that Mr Kessler joins two other authors who have written Clinton takedowns in 'a hat trick of despicable actors concocting trashy nonsense'

The two most powerful men in the world: President Barack Obama stands with Vice President Joe Biden

Vice-President Biden is concerned that his motorcade (above) does not disturb his neighbours in Delaware

Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Secretary Clinton, told the Washington Examiner reported the New York Daily News that Mr Kessler joins two other authors (Daniel Halper and Ed Klein) who have written Clinton takedowns this summer in 'a hat trick of despicable actors concocting trashy nonsense.

BIDEN'S BID FOR HIGH OFFICE Joe Biden's appointment as Barack Obama's number two was the culmination of a career that saw him, in 1988, attempt to become the youngest president since John F. Kennedy (who also had a propensity for nude swimming). In September 1987, the campaign ran into trouble when he was accused of plagiarising a speech that had been made earlier that year by Neil Kinnock. Mr Biden stood down. Advertisement

'Their behaviour should neither be allowed nor enabled, and legitimate media outlets who know with every fibre of their beings that it is completely made up should not get down in the gutter with them.'

The Secret Service is also concerned by Mr Biden's insistence that the motorcade that accompanies him everywhere does not disturb his neighbours in his home state of Delaware, says Mr Kessler.

This means that the Vice-President put a potentially dangerous distance between himself and his motorcade that carries his on-call doctor and the the 40-pound 'football' that enables him, if necessary, to authorise the launching of a nuclear warhead.

'What's going to happen is either you're going to have a dead vice president in Delaware or you're going to have agents killed in Delaware because Secret Service management refused to stand up to [Vice-President Biden],' Mr Kessler quotes an unnamed agent as saying.

President Barack Obama, and Vice-President Joe Biden - according to the Secret Service the VP is more concerned with being seen as an ordinary guy rather than the man who might have to launch a nuclear war