His music and image are about as far from my taste as you can be but I have met the bloke a couple of times, Helsinki in 63 and Moscow in 76 and he was really pleasant. I was dragged along to his Moscow concert in 76, a surly and unwilling teenage Led Zep fan, but he put on a great and really professional show.
He was somewhat down on The Damned, when they appeared on TOTP early in their career. Seeing as he started out with that sultry rocker rebel image himself, in 1959 - a bit of a hyprocrit. Nob end