Behind the Candelabra : My Life With Liberace

Scott Thorson, a poor boy from a succession of foster homes, met Liberace when he was just 16 years old. Liberace, aged 57, took Scott under his wing as ''the son he''d never had''. By the time Scott was 17, he was also Liberace''s lover.

Liberace lived life by his credo ''too much of a good thing is wonderful'' and Scott shared in it: the fur coats, the Rolls-Royces, the jewellery, the celebrity friends, the 26 lap dogs. A more opulent lifestyle is hard to imagine but it came at a price: Liberace sent Scott to his plastic surgeon to have his face remodeled in Liberace''s own image.

By turns bizarre, shocking and touchingly intimate, Behind the Candelabra is a compulsive insight in to Liberace, the man behind the flamboyant performer whose successes provide a bright counterpoint to a darker tale of a man hungry for power, a man given to every excess.