Fidel Castro the restless revolutionary had no time for pleasure, despising holidays as ‘bourgeois’ and claiming to live in a fisherman’s hut. His only luxury was the cigars that he continually chomped.

Or so he insisted to fellow Cubans who endured decades of abject poverty, crumbling housing and food rationing during his long rule. However, the reality — carefully kept from public consumption thanks to his iron grip on the media and public discourse — was very different.

A prodigious womaniser and food connoisseur who kept some 20 luxurious properties throughout the Caribbean — including a private island he used to visit on his beautiful yacht — Castro was a complete fraud.

A prodigious womaniser and food connoisseur who kept some 20 luxurious properties throughout the Caribbean — including a private island he used to visit on his beautiful yacht — Castro was a complete fraud. Seen above being presented with an invitation to the New York Press Photographer's Ball, New York City, April 23, 1959

The man who spent his life railing against the excesses of capitalism lived like a king — and a very debauched one at that.

Western observers have long suspected that ‘El Comandante’ — The Commander — was siphoning off the proceeds from state-run enterprises, including a small gold mine.

However, when Forbes magazine listed Castro in 2006 as one of the world’s richest ‘kings, queens and dictators’, he angrily insisted he lived on a salary of £20 a month.

In this 1958 file photo, Castro, center, questions a man charged with banditry as his mistress Celia Sanchez looks on during a trial held in the guerrillas' base in the Cuban mountain range of Sierra Maestra. Sanchez was his longtime secretary

On the mainland, his grand homes included an ‘immense’ Havana estate with a rooftop bowling alley, personal hospital and indoor basketball court, and a seaside villa with pool, Jacuzzi and sauna

The full extent of his hypocrisy and personal excesses emerged only in 2014 when a former longtime bodyguard, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, wrote a book about Castro’s secret life and estimated he was worth at least £100 million.

He revealed in lavish detail that would have appalled struggling Cubans how even a typical day’s spear-fishing for Castro in the crystal-clear waters off his private island was like the ‘royal hunts of Louis XV in the forests around Versailles’.

Rising at midday, Castro would be dressed in his scuba gear by kneeling flunkeys. He would then head off in a gleaming motor boat — filled with his favourite expensive whisky and grilled langoustines — to waters that had already been scouted that morning by staff anxious to find the areas with the most fish.

People with images of Fidel Castro gather one day after his death in Havana, Cuba

As for that private island, Cayo Piedra, Sanchez described it as a ‘garden of Eden’ where he entertained famous guests such as the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez and could show off a spectacular lagoon filled with turtles and dolphins. Castro would sail there on an 88 ft luxury yacht fitted out with rare Angolan wood.

On the mainland, his grand homes included an ‘immense’ Havana estate with a rooftop bowling alley, personal hospital and indoor basketball court, and a seaside villa with pool, Jacuzzi and sauna. His most notorious home was Unit 160, or Punto Cero, a fortress-like compound which wasn’t just the HQ for his torture and surveillance regime, but also housed his own ice-cream factory.

Castro was terrified of being poisoned and sourced all his own food locally or from rich overseas friends who supplied him with edible luxuries. Castro not only had his own cow to provide all his dairy needs but so did each of his children. Close to Unit 160, a separate and more secret abode was set aside for another of his vices — women. Castro regularly met his mistresses there.

Reported lovers included the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida. He even kept secret the existence of his wives

Castro, who even kept secret the existence of his wives, was able to conceal a rapacious infidelity that produced at least nine children by four women. Reported lovers ranged from the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida to an underage nightclub dancer who reported how he smoked continually during sex.

His notorious affairs earned him the nickname ‘the Horse’. He had a taste for young Cuban women of every colour and background, and half-jokingly told a journalist that it was his colossal sexual drive that had led him away from the Roman Catholic Church.

In Havana, the story went that, when engaged with his nubile sexual partners, he always kept his army boots on — a legacy, presumably, of his days as a revolutionary guerrilla, when enemies might strike at any moment.

Castro cheated on both his wives. His first, Mirta Diaz-Balart, whom he wed when he was still a law student, gave him a son, Fidelito (Little Fidel). However, after she divorced him, Castro cruelly engineered for the boy to visit him in Mexico and never let his ex-wife have the child back. Fidelito was educated in Moscow and became a top Cuban nuclear scientist before his father sacked him.

One of Castro’s early mistresses was Natalia Revuelta, a cardiologist’s wife who gave him a daughter

One of Castro’s early mistresses was Natalia Revuelta, a cardiologist’s wife who gave him a daughter. The latter, Alina, became a model and scandalised her father by appearing — dressed in a bikini — in a Havana Club rum advert. She later fled her father’s repressive regime wearing a wig and with a fake Spanish passport.

Castro then had an affair with his longtime secretary, Celia Sanchez. When she died in 1980, he married his second wife, Dalia, a former school teacher, who gave him another five legitimate sons. They had in fact been lovers for many years, with her discreetly installed in a Castro-owned house outside Havana.

According to his bodyguard, Sanchez, Castro had first seen the ‘gorgeous’ Dalia at an open-air speech in 1961. She was in the first row and ‘he rapidly started exchanging furtive and meaningful glances’ with her, said Sanchez.

Castro then had an affair with his longtime secretary, Celia Sanchez (pictured behind him in 1958)

The old goat, who used Viagra in later life, had flings with his English and French interpreters and an airline stewardess, Gladys, who attended to him on foreign trips. ‘He doubtless had other relationships that I did not know about,’ said Sanchez.

Castro’s craving for prostitutes made problems for his Communist allies. Markus Wolf, East Germany’s former spy chief, recalled a security scare when Castro disappeared on a visit to East Berlin. He climbed out of his hotel window one night and headed off to an illegal brothel.

He knew his hosts could have supplied him with girls but, as Wolf said, ‘that simply wasn’t his way’. According to Sanchez, Castro’s claims to live ‘frugally’ were ‘lies — he lives in a luxury most Cubans can’t imagine’.

With his shadow gone from their lives, Cubans will soon discover all too painfully the extent of the terrible trick he played on them.

Castro talks with his wife Dalia Soto del Valle, during a special session of the Cuban Parliament, in 2010

Ex-lover's bid to kill him with poison in face cream

For decades, the CIA and Cuban exiles tried to assassinate Castro in what are alleged to have been 638 separate plots — including enlisting his mistress to kill him as they lay in bed together.

Marita Lorenz, now 77, was ‘torn between love and hate’ when she returned from a hospital visit to America to poison Castro using two deadly botulism pills — allegedly supplied by the Mafia — hidden in a jar of Pond’s face cream.

The German-born American was 19 when she fell for the Cuban dictator in 1959 and spent nine months living with him at the Havana Hilton.

Marita Lorenz is shown at a press conference in 1977. She had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 at the age of 19 was involved in CIA plot to assassinate Castro in 1960

They shared their bedroom with a collection of Corgi toy cars and tanks that Castro loved to ‘scoot across the dresser’ — and a real bazooka that he kept under the bed.

The plot fell apart when Marita realised she couldn’t get the cold cream off the pills and flushed them down a bidet.

Other contemplated plots included putting a bomb inside a seashell on the seabed where Castro, a keen scuba diver, liked exploring; impregnating his diving suit with a fungus to give him a horrible skin disease; and handing him an exploding cigar when he visited the UN in New York. The CIA apparently also looked into slipping deadly bacteria into his tea, coffee or ice cream.

Lorenz (pictured in 2001) wrote a book, Dear Fidel, about her affair with the Cuban leader

A former bodyguard claims that a 1963 attempt to have a restaurant worker at the Havana Hilton poison a chocolate milkshake was the closest the CIA ever came to killing his boss. The operation was foiled only after the poison pills fell out of a freezer in which they had been stored.

U.S. records show that the CIA supplied various weapons to a Cuban official in the early Sixties. These included high-powered rifles and a ballpoint pen fitted with a hypodermic needle ‘so fine that the victim would not notice its insertion’. It was never used.

And if the CIA couldn’t kill Castro, they hoped to humiliate him in public. Senior officials discussed spraying his broadcasting studio with a chemical similar to the hallucinogenic drug LSD, or dusting his shoes with a depilatory so strong that it would make his eyebrows, beard and pubic hair fall out.

The plot relied on Castro leaving his shoes outside his hotel room during a foreign trip, but he cancelled the visit.

A sniper hit and a grenade attack on a baseball game failed, too — as did an effort in 2000, when 200lb of explosives were found under a podium where he was due to speak.

Labour MPs rush to praise tyrant

By Gerri Peev, Political Correspondant

Labour frontbenchers lined up to praise tyrant Fidel Castro as a ‘force for good’.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said there were ‘many flaws’ in the Cuban regime but added that the island was a ‘beacon of hope’.

Mr McDonnell said: ‘The revolution took place and it redistributed wealth and the land, it introduced a health service and an education service, which was second to none in the world in some instances.

‘In the face of the blockades and opposition from the US, the achievements of the Cuban revolution have to be admired.’

He was echoing the sentiments of Jeremy Corbyn, a long-standing supporter of the pro-Castro Cuba Solidarity Campaign, who had praised Castro’s ‘heroism’.

Jeremy Corbyn appeared to play down the human rights abuses under Castro

The Labour leader appeared to play down the human rights abuses under Castro, saying the Cuban revolutionary would be remembered as a ‘champion of social justice’. He added: ‘I think history will show that Castro was such a key figure, it seems he has been with us for ever.’

Other Labour figures expressed dismay at their frontbench’s position on the dictator.

MP Ian Austin said: ‘It’s true that Fidel Castro outlasted ten US presidents, but unlike them he didn’t have to stand for election. And he could imprison his opponents.’

Tony McNulty, a former Labour Home Office minister, said on Twitter: ‘So killing opponents, locking up dissidents, banning trade unions and free press, repressing gays, no elections, are minor flaws? Who knew?’

MP John Woodcock mocked Mr Corbyn, calling him ‘JC’.

He said: ‘Castro “saw off” all those presidents because the US is a democracy and he [was] a dictator who locked up or killed his opponents. Good grief, JC.’

Utopia? No, health care is a shambles

By Daniel Bates in New York

Cuba's healthcare system is a shambles and far from the utopia depicted by left-wing supporters.

It has three tiers – one for tourists, one for the political elite, and a far worse one for ordinary Cubans. For the last group the system is free, but plagued by inefficiency, lack of basic equipment and chronic staff shortages.

In an analysis called Castrocare In Crisis, Laurie Garrett – of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank – wrote that there are so few basic supplies that patients bring their own bed sheets and syringes to hospital.

Cuba's healthcare system is a shambles and far from the utopia depicted by left-wing supporters

She wrote that women shy away from gynaecological exams as they ‘fear infection from unhygienic equipment and practices’.

Over the past 25 years the use of smear tests has fallen by a third, leading to a doubling in the rate of cervical cancer. Even something as simple as getting a pair of glasses through subsidised state channels can take months.

For routine tests patients have to queue up from the early hours of the morning. Doctors reportedly earn just £20 a month after the 66 per cent tax rate.

Tourists are often surprised to learn that their taxi drivers are surgeons working their second job – as it pays much more.

Some patients reportedly resort to bribery and bring their doctors food or money to try to get operations and tests sooner.

Sebastian Arcos of the Cuban Research Institute said: ‘You look at the speciality clinics for tourists and the politicians and the contrast is shocking.’