He’s one of the most well-known figures in the Labour Party, but Lord Alli is among the least prominent peers in the public eye.

For decades, the millionaire has been in the background of politics – a ‘yoof TV’ tycoon who Tony Blair would call when he wanted to know what young people thought.

Yet as a life peer, the 59-year-old has spoken only occasionally in his almost 30 years in the House of Lords. Instead, he has let his money do the talking – handing more than £500,000 to Labour over the years.

But the revelation that Sir Keir Starmer handed him a pass to Downing Street has thrust Labour’s age-old problem of ‘cash for access’ back into the spotlight.

Lord Alli was encouraged to join Labour by his next-door neighbour, Emily Thornberry, in east London in the early 1990s. They have been good friends since – Lord Alli and his partner were best men at her wedding and he is godfather to her son. His proximity to power is a long way from his humble beginnings. The son of first-generation immigrants, Lord Alli left his south London comprehensive at 16 to support his parents.

He ignored his school’s careers adviser, who encouraged him to become a bus conductor, and got his first job as a £40-a-week researcher on a magazine called Planned Savings. Finding he had a natural aptitude for figures, he excelled at the job and was headhunted by Save and Prosper as head of investment research. He went on to become a publisher, then a financial consultant earning £1,000 a day.

But despite his success, he wanted to do something more creative – and he formed a TV production company in 1992 with his partner Charlie Parsons and The Boomtown Rats’ Sir Bob Geldof.

Successes included Survivor, one of the first big hits of the reality TV era with the format sold around the world.

They won the commission to make Big Breakfast after Lord Alli submitted a proposal on the back of a Cornflakes packet.

While the peer was once described as the man who ‘perfected TV presented by morons for morons’, he was nominated to the ‘committee for cool’ – Panel 2000 – which advised the Government on how best to promote Britain around the world ahead of the millennium.

In 1998, he was made a life peer at the age of 34, becoming the youngest and first openly gay peer in Parliament. He was seen as the antithesis of an ‘Establishment’ figure, but his ennoblement was criticised as having more to do with his New Labour connections than his political talent.

He made his first major contribution to the Lords in a debate on lowering the age of consent for gay relationships from 18 to 16.

In his most recent contribution, he said: ‘[A Labour victory] has been far too long coming for me, but it is here now. Let us not waste the opportunity to implement change’.