Impresario and producer Born: January 16, 1936;

Died: March 7, 2016

Michael White, who has died of heart failure in California aged 80, was often called the most famous person you’ve never heard of. The Glasgow-born impresario and producer was responsible for some of the biggest stage and movie hits of all time, including The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Oh! Calcutta! and Monty Python’s Holy Grail, and yet to the wider public he was almost entirely unknown.

In the worlds of theatre, music, art, fashion and film, however, he was something of a legend and at his height, was the most brilliant young successful producer in London, producing theatre shows such as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Annie and shows for Yoko Ono, Barry Humphries and many others. He is also credited with discovering the supermodel Kate Moss.

With a laidback style, slow, melodic voice and big round glasses, he was sometimes compared to Andy Warhol as someone who liked to pull people together and let them do their thing rather than dictate. John Cleese said of him: “He was of those people who didn’t try to dominate and he trusted us. He thought we had talent.”

In all, White produced more than 200 shows and films and mostly he appeared to be ahead of the pop cultural wave. In the 1980s, for instance, he produced The Comic Strip, the Channel 4 comedy that brought alternative comedians to the mainstream, and in the 60s and 70s, became famous for pushing sexual and moral boundaries with shows like Oh! Calcutta! And even towards the end of his career, he was still innovating, making Shoot Me in 2005, which told the story of trying to find a new model in London and was the first scripted reality show on British television.

His stage hit Oh! Calcutta! was a theatrical revue featuring sketches about sex and when White was trying to get the show produced, no one wanted to be involved at first because of the subject matter and the fact it featured nudity. However, White kept pushing and it was eventually approved by the Lord Chamberlain and after the first performance in 1969, became a huge international hit.

Five years later, The Rocky Horror Picture Show did something similar. With its transvestite star, there was again doubt that it would be a hit, but White pushed on and it became an overnight sensation in 1975 and has been a cult phenomenon ever since.

White believed the open-mindedness that led him to love and produce such shows came from his childhood. He was born in Glasgow, although was brought up in London and Switzerland. His father was from Dublin and his mother was of Russian descent and it was she who gave him his love of the arts, often taking him to ballet when he was a boy.

It was not a happy childhood though. White suffered badly from asthma and when he was seven years old and bedridden, his doctors said that he should be sent to Europe for the sake of his health.

The destination was Switzerland but it was not a particularly happy time. He was the only boy at the school who spoke English so had to learn French quickly, but just as he became fluent, the doctors decided that he needed to be moved even higher up into the mountains and so found himself at another school in German-speaking Swizterland.

He had to start all over again there, aged just 10, although even then he could see the advantages. It was often lonely, but he learned to ski and he always believed that being exposed to so many cultures as a boy made him less judgemental as an adult.

It was also in Switzerland that he discovered his love for the theatre while doing a summer job for a producer and it led to him coming to London to work as an assistant to Sir Peter Daubeny at the World Theatre.

He stayed there for five years but was soon desperate to produce his own show and did so with The Connection when he was still only 26 years old. It was not a success though: the play was about a group of drug addicts in a New York loft looking for the “connection” after shooting up and in a West End theatre, it felt wrong from the start and was a flop.

White was undaunted though and in the late 1960s thought he had found the perfect vehicle in Anthony Shaffer’s detective thriller Sleuth. The problem this time was finding anyone to appear it – the play relies on an audacious plot twist and many actors, including Laurence Olivier, believed the audience would spot it and laugh. White persisted though and when Anthony Quayle agreed to star in it, it was a hit and later became a film (this time, Olivier was available).

It was the beginning of White’s extraordinary career in theatre and film. At one point he had seven productions running at one time, and in the 1970s and 80s became interested in film, producing the cult classic comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1974, and The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1978.

He was not immune from failure, though, and had several flops, most famously the musical Charlie with Michael Crawford. Everything about that show, he said, meant that it should have been a hit, but it was not and there was no rhyme or reason to it. Producing shows was a gamble, he said, and sometimes the gamble did not pay off and he was left with the bills. In his lifetime, he had made and lost several fortunes (and was declared bankrupt in 2005) and by the end of his life was living relatively modestly.

One thing that never changed, though, was his love of parties, drinking (he started every day with a Bloody Mary) and beautiful young women and in many ways he was a socialite first and a producer second. “I’ve had a lot of girlfriends,” he once said. “If you lined them all up it would a gobsmacking sight because of their combined beauty and sense of fun.”

He also seemed to be able to get away with what some people might call sexism. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a playboy,” he said. “People go to museums to look at pictures – women are like living pictures.”

He also seemed to have a talent for spotting talented young women before they were famous, and is credited with spotting the model Kate Moss’s potential long before anyone else did. Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, remembers White as being the first person to talk to her about Kate Moss, long before any agent or editor.

White published his autobiography Empty Seats in 1984 and in 2013 was the subject of the documentary The Last Impresario which was based on 65 interviews with his friends and colleagues. One of those who spoke to the documentary was the actress Naomi Watts who said White was ultimately interested in people. “One minute he was hanging out in some grungy bar then he was dining with Margaret Thatcher.”

Although he was famous for his partying ways (he was said to be the only man who could keep up with Moss) in later years he had suffered several strokes which limited his ability to speak and he was not rich when he died. He was once asked whether he ever craved stability and continuity in his life. His answer? “You get that when you’re dead so while you’re alive, you have to live.”

White was presented with the Special Award, honouring lifetime achievements, at Britain’s Olivier Awards in 2014. He was married twice, first to the model Sarah Hillsdon, with whom he had three children, and secondly to Louise Moores, with whom he had a son.