A close look at Camila Batmanghelidjh's life and times may suggest to cynics that an uncanny ability to spin very extravagant yarns actually lies at the heart of her success

Swathes of London would 'descend into savagery'. There would be riots in the streets, and widespread looting. Angry mobs would carry out 'arson attacks' on government buildings.

This apocalyptic scenario formed the basis of an extraordinary document sent to the Government from the email account of Kids Company chief Camila Batmanghelidjh.

As a sort of ransom note to ministers, signed by her charity's chairman Alan Yentob, its message was simple: hand over a £3 million emergency grant to my charity or London will burn.

To a degree, it had its desired effect because that money was promptly given.

Yet those millions weren't enough. Kids Company hit the wall. Around £1.2 million of the £3 million was lost. And now three major inquiries are investigating the collapsed charity, which over the past decade has got through more than £30 million in public funds.

At the same time, those predicted riots have not broken out.

This illustrates a pertinent point: that behind her colourful public profile, Ms Batmanghelidjh seems typical of so many well-known figures whose pronouncements ought to, at times, be taken with a pinch of salt.

Indeed, a close look at the 52-year-old's life and times may suggest to cynics that an uncanny ability to spin very extravagant yarns actually lies at the heart of her success.

Ms Batmanghelidjh founded Kids Company in 1996, aiming to provide counselling and other support to deprived children in South London.

Soon, she'd turned it into one of Britain's trendiest charities, with a £25 million-a-year budget, outposts in Bristol and Liverpool, and with a string of celebrity patrons, from Coldplay, who donated more than £10 million, to Sir Richard Branson, Trudie Styler (Mrs Sting), and the Prince of Wales.

Politicians, bewitched by her charms, were handing Ms Batmanghelidjh £4.7 million a year. Cherie Blair and Samantha Cameron lent support from Downing Street.

Driving public interest in the organisation required a hugely energetic public relations campaign. This meant Ms Batmanghelidjh gave countless interviews, often larded with dramatic anecdotes about Kids Company's work on the front line of urban Britain.

Setting up the charity, she once recalled, had put her in the firing line of 'drug addicts and dealers who attempted to shoot us, and drove a car onto our premises to run over the children, or who arrived armed with knives to stab us'.

As a result of this, and many other colourful tales, the brave and powerful woman, in her signature multi-coloured robes and turban, became dubbed 'the Angel of Peckham'.

Her central message was that by providing love, kindness, and expert counselling to children who lack such things at home, Kids Company could rebuild shattered lives, in a way that traditional charities and public sector agencies couldn't.

It's always been a heartening tale. And all the while, Ms Batmanghelidjh styled herself as a leading expert in child psychology. 'I think I was just born with an intuition for this work,' she once said. Yet, as we have already seen, her comments can't always be taken at face value.

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Celebrities and the royals were bewitched by Camila's charms (she is pictured with Sting and his wife Trudie, left, and with Prince Charles, right)

Stars were lining up to become patrons of the charity (Camila is pictured with Claudia Schiffer, Stella McCartney, Natalia Vodianova and Gwyneth Paltrow at Fashion's Night Out At Stella McCartney)

Take, for example, the question of her formal qualifications. In a Companies House document, her profession was once listed as 'psychiatrist'. That's demonstrably untrue, however: psychiatrists must by law be qualified medical doctors, which she is not.

Asked about this discrepancy, Ms Batmanghelidjh's lawyers this week blamed it on an administrative error.

Perhaps a more accurate way to refer to her — and indeed the term she's more frequently used over the past two decades — is as a 'psychotherapist'.

However, this means very little: the field of psychotherapy is completely unregulated, so anyone can call themselves one.

In the UK, most respected professionals therefore belong to one of three major organisations: the Association of Child Psychotherapists, the UK Council for Psychotherapy, and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

Each has strict rules about members' qualifications. Not one lists Ms Batmanghelidjh as a member.

That's not to say, however, that Britain's most high-profile charity queen doesn't have some professional credentials.

A few months ago, for example, Glamour Magazine quoted her saying: 'I started my masters in psychotherapy at Regent's University in London as their youngest ever masters intake, aged 21. I'd read so much, had obtained a first-class degree from Warwick, and had done a lot of experience in the field. So they let me in.'

All very impressive. Except for one key fact: Regent's University did not exist in 1984, when Ms Batmanghelidjh was 21. Indeed, it only began life in the Nineties, when it was called Regent's College.

Politicians, bewitched by her charms, were handing Ms Batmanghelidjh £4.7 million a year (Camila pictured with David Cameron, left and Boris Johnson, right)

Alan Yentob sent an email claiming that swathes of London would 'descend into savagery' unless the charity received a £3million grant

As for Warwick University, Ms Batmanghelidjh did not complete her undergraduate career there until 1985 (she has a BA in Theatre Studies). She therefore cannot have been the 'youngest ever' person to study for a Masters at Regent's University, aged 21.

In fact, Ms Batmanghelidjh studied for her MA at a private, American establishment called Antioch University, which in the Eighties operated an overseas campus at an 'educational industrial park' in London, on the site of what is now Regent's University. A spokesman for Antioch says she began its MA course in 'Psychology of Therapy and Counselling' in the autumn of 1986, aged 23, and graduated five years later.

Does the apparent gulf between what Ms Batmanghelidjh was quoted telling Glamour Magazine, and what actually occurred, matter? Some would argue not, saying that such matters are immaterial, or do little to change the noble aims of Kids Company, through which she has undoubtedly helped many children over the years.

Yet such discrepancies do raise important questions. If this apparently inconsequential anecdote turns out to be even partly untrue, shouldn't we be rather wary of believing everything Ms Batmanghelidjh says?

To this effect, we should perhaps consider several other different — and at times contradictory — claims attributed to her over the years.

Born in Tehran on New Year's Day 1963, Camila Batmanghelidjh is one of four children of Fereydoon Batman-Ghelidj, a property developer and doctor who belonged to one of pre-revolutionary Iran's wealthiest and most influential families.

Her uncle, Hooshang, was the Iranian ambassador to Turkey. Grandfather Mehdi was a wealthy property developer, too. And a great uncle, Nader, was an army general and loyal henchman of the country's ruling Shah.

In interviews, her mother, Lucile, has been described as 'a Belgian aristocrat'. This may be partially true, but as a child, the mixed-race Lucile was a pupil at St Martin's Girls School in Solihull in the West Midlands, where a recent edition of the old girls' newsletter described her as 'the first Persian girl' to attend the school.

But while her stories of the Kids Company on the frontline of urban Britain attracted many high profile admirers, such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Matthew Williamson, our investigation reveals her comments cannot always be taken at face value

Kids Company had a string of celebrity patrons including Coldplay who donated more than £10 million (pictured is Camila Batmanghelidjh and lead singer Chris Martin during a private gig by Coldplay)

Either way, Ms Batmanghelidjh was a severely premature child, weighing around 2.2 lb. This left her with terrible dyslexia. Indeed, her inability to read and write properly has been used to explain the fact that she had three different secretaries on the Kids Company payroll.

She has also spoken of suffering 'severe learning difficulties', an endocrine disorder (which rendered her overweight) and such poor spatial awareness that she was unable to walk up the stairs and 'couldn't tie my shoelaces until I was 12'.

Ms Batmanghelidjh spent her early years being driven around by security guards, and living a life of wealth and luxury in the Shah's Iran, where her family had three houses with 'sweeping staircases, marble floors, and chandeliers'.

In 2013, she told the Sunday Times she enjoyed holidays at a vast mansion by the Caspian Sea where (oddly given the medical complaints) she enjoyed water-skiing: 'I was like Speedy Gonzales.'

By her own account, her interest in child psychology then started precociously early.

In her 2006 memoir, Shattered Lives, she wrote: 'Throughout my life I have worked with vulnerable children. It began when I was nine years old. I used to look after between 70 and 90 children in a nursery in Iran for an hour-and-a-half while their teachers went to lunch. Looking back, I now realise I had an exceptional gift.'

A moving anecdote. But is it credible?

Apart from the question of whether a responsible adult, let alone a teacher, would have left scores of children in the care of a nine-year-old, it's worth pointing out that Ms Batmanghelidjh offered a slightly different version of events in 2002, when the Daily Telegraph quoted her saying: 'Aged nine, I looked after 180 [children] at a kindergarten every day while the teachers went for lunch.'

Grayson Perry and Camila Batmanghelidjh together at a private view of the Kids Company's 'Holding Up Childhood' exhibition

The charity long list of celebrity patrons included billioniare businessman Sir Richard Branson

Numbers may, of course, not be her strong point. But neither, given her extreme dyslexia, is reading. Which is interesting, given that she has on several occasions also told interviewers that, at the tender age of nine, she enrolled her mother in Iran's child psychology association, because 'they would not accept membership from children' and she wanted to read the organisation's journals.

In 2007, she told the Telegraph that the scientific publication — aimed, remember, at literate adults — came 'every month' for her to read. Yet, in Shattered Lives, she wrote: 'It used to come every Wednesday.'

Whatever the finer details, Ms Batmanghelidjh soon left Iran — thanks to another strange, even surreal, episode.

'Two of my paintings won an international award in a competition for adults,' she wrote in the Independent in 2006. 'When the culture minister found out I was only nine, he told my parents I was far too unusual for Iranian schools and they should get me out of the country.'

Shortly afterwards she was sent to school in Switzerland, and then at Sherborne, the boarding establishment in Dorset. She was there in 1979, when the Iranian revolution broke out. In the ensuing chaos, her family's land and property was confiscated, and her relatives were forced to flee the country, with the exception of her father, who was imprisoned.

Understandably, she says she applied for asylum in the UK. It is not clear when this was granted, but she has said she has 'refugee status'.

Documents filed with Companies House, however, describe Ms Batmanghelidjh as 'British'.

Confusion also surrounds how her expensive boarding fees at Sherborne were paid.

Politicians, bewitched by her charms, were handing Ms Batmanghelidjh £4.7 million a year (pictured with David Cameron)

In 2009, she told the Evening Standard she was indebted to 'a kindly bank manager' who she wanted to meet and thank. Three years later, she explained further, saying he paid the bill with 'his own money'.

It's a sweet story. But it is also at odds with a 2013 Guardian article which said 'the bank manager managed to get into her father's bank accounts', releasing funds frozen by the new Tehran regime.

Whatever really happened, the Iranian revolution was clearly a formative experience. Ms Batmanghelidjh said it left her 'down to my last 50p and thinking I can either buy bread or catch the Tube. Suddenly it hit me: this is what poverty means: no choice'.

Again, a compelling story. But one which again appears to vary with some other points of view.

For example, Ms Batmanghelidjh's stepmother, Xiaopo Huang, who lives in the U.S. state of Virginia, told the Mail this week that the family was supported after the revolution by 'a small trust fund', which their father had established off-shore. While this didn't make them rich, it did make the family comfortably off.

Indeed, when Ms Batmanghelidjh's grandfather, Mehdi, died in London in 1983, he left an estate valued at nearly £300,000, a sizeable sum at the time — though we of course don't know if any of it went to Ms Batmanghelidjh.

Two years earlier, her student sister, Lila, committed suicide. At around the same time, Ms Batmanghelidjh says she was hospitalised with a pituitary gland disorder which left her close to death. 'Everyone on my ward died, except me,' she told the Evening Standard.

After she recovered from that scare, Ms Batmanghelidjh enrolled at Warwick University in 1982.

There, she learned her father had managed to get out of Iran. 'Police . . .informed me that he'd escaped across the border from Iran to Turkey,' Glamour Magazine quoted her saying this year. 'He'd skinned a sheep, used it as a coat, and swam across the sea.'

The offices of the charity in London which was shut for good in July over concerns about the Kids Company's finances

Three major inquiries are investigating the collapsed charity, which closed recently after getting through more than £30 million in public funds (pictured are staff members)

Another dramatic story. However, a cynic might wonder how a man might 'swim to freedom' from Iran to Turkey when there is no coastline, or sea, between the two nations.

In any case, her father ended up in America, where in 1992 he wrote a best-selling self-help book called Your Body's Many Cries For Water. It described how many medical conditions, some regarded as incurable, could be treated by drinking large amounts of water. They included, according to his obituary in the Washington Post, 'depression, asthma, arthritis, back pain, migraines, high blood pressure, multiple sclerosis'.

Not everyone agreed. Quackwatch website, which sets out to expose what it regards as bogus medical cures, described his claims as 'absolute nonsense'.

To help sell the book, Fereydoon claimed to have studied under penicillin pioneer Sir Alexander Fleming at St Mary's Hospital medical school in Paddington, London, from 1951 to 1956. A spokesman for St Mary's says this was unlikely, given that Sir Alexander retired in 1949.

For her part, Ms Batmanghelidjh helped set up a charity called Place2Be, and told Glamour she 'founded' it at the age of 24, which would have been in 1987. Strangely, however, Place2Be, which now counts the Duchess of Cambridge as a patron, was not formally registered as a charity until 1994.

She left the organisation, and founded Kids Company in 1996. The fate of that charity is, of course, now the subject of multiple investigations. Part of them may well focus on extravagant claims made for its achievements in recent years.

It has, for example, publicly claimed to work with a total of 36,000 children, when the true figure is said to be less than half that. It has also sought Government grants by claiming that 16,000 of these clients are “high risk,” when records recently given by the charity to local councils suggest that fewer than 500 actually were.

Doubtless, the investigations, too, will look at highly-controversial ways in which the charity’s funds were spent.

Some, it has been alleged, was simply handed in brown envelopes to teenagers and young adults who turned up at its offices. It is alleged that tens of thousands more seem to have been used to pay for the boarding school education of the children of Kids Company staff.

Around £5,000-a-month also went on renting a Grade II-listed Art Deco mansion in London, where Ms Batmanghelidjh liked to swim in an indoor pool. And tens of thousands more went on the salary of a glamorous blonde nurse called Maria Nieto, whose duties at Kids Company appear to have involved administering private medical treatments to Ms Batmanghelidjh.

Elsewhere Kids Company’s colourful founder faces financial issues of her own.

A second mortgage was taken out against her London home in 2011 by Blemain Finance Limited, a Cheshire-based firm which specialises in lending to clients with patchy credit histories. And two county court judgments, over around £6,000 in personal debt, were lodged against her in 2013 and remain unsettled.

Asked about a range of apparent discrepancies in roughly a dozen published interviews, and articles that she has written over the years, Kids Company’s lawyers told the Mail last night that they rejected any suggestion that their client was dishonest.

“Ms Batmanghelidjh has been misquoted and the quotes attributed to her [in the pieces] are not accurate, nor did she make many of these claims. She has never misrepresented her past or qualifications to anyone.”

This high-profile woman, who has done so much to help children over the years, will nonetheless, now be helping the police, National Audit Office, the Commons Public Accounts Select Committee and the Charities Commission with their inquiries. Perhaps they will be able to iron out the many strange chapters in her own story.