New York: As the mega-billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates are heading for divorce, a biographer has spilled the beans about the Microsoft co-founder’s and described him as a womanising party-boy during his early years, the Daily Mail reported.
The biographer James Wallace has claimed that Gates once allegedly held naked parties with strippers during his wild bachelor days.
The alleged parties took place at Gates’ Laurelhurst, Washington home and were first detailed in Wallace’s 1997 book, Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace.
He described the parties as “wild” and said the racy events would often see Gates and his entourage flock to one of Seattle’s all-nude nightclubs and “hire dancers to come to his home and swim naked with his friends in his indoor pool.”
Wallace also described a young Gates as a renowned “womaniser”, with his antics reportedly placing a strain on his relationship with Melinda while they were dating, The Sun reported.
“Though Gates began dating French (Melinda’s maiden name) in 1988, he continued to play the field for a while, especially when he was out of town on business, when he would frequently hit on female journalists who covered Microsoft and the company industry,” a passage of the book reads.
“His womanising was well known, although not well reported, because Gates and Microsoft spoon-fed stories to industry writers for such papers as the New York Times, and none of them wanted the flow of information to stop,” it added.
Melinda was said to be “well aware” of Gate’s womanising and “consequently their relationship ran hot and cold,” the report said.
Vern Raburn, Gates’s longtime friend and former Microsoft executive, also spoke to the Daily Mail to corroborate Wallace’s claims.
Raburn agreed that Gate’s rampant womanising plagued his early relations with Melinda after they began dating in 1988.
However, Gates put all playboy antics behind him when he and Melinda tied the knot in 1994, Raburn said.
Recently, the couple announced that they were ending their marriage after 27 years together. They reportedly waited until their third and youngest child turned 18 before announcing the split.
According to reports, Melinda Gates filed for the divorce asserting that their marriage was “irretrievably broken”.
