Jobs was a sexist bully - ex-lover

He was the billionaire crown prince of Silicon Valley, hailed across the world as the ablest chief executive of his generation and a visionary model to young entrepreneurs aspiring to greatness.

But, behind closed doors, Steve Jobs could be a sexist bully, a skinflint and a pathological liar who behaved appallingly, according to a forthcoming memoir by the first girlfriend of the Apple boss.

In a candid account of their on-off relationship through the 1970s, Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Jobs's eldest child, depicts an "emotional vortex" of a man badly scarred by his childhood.

The Apple chief, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011 at the age of 56, is repeatedly accused of wrongdoing in The Bite in the Apple, due to be published in the US this month.

The memoir tells the story of how one of the most accomplished captains of American industry often behaved like a spoilt brat.

Brennan's disclosures about Jobs's behaviour could reignite a simmering dispute with his family. Her invitation to Jobs's memorial service at Stanford University was withdrawn after she cooperated with Rolling Stone magazine on an article about their relationship.

The book, subtitled A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs, has returned Jobs to the pages of US tabloids in recent days with extracts published in the New York Post.

According to Brennan, a painter and graphic designer who lives in Monterey, California, Jobs was a "brilliant misfit", convinced he was going to die young, who became "positively despotic".

"As Apple grew, so did Steve's sense of self-entitlement," she writes.

The couple met at high school in Cupertino, California. They lived together as Jobs and a friend, Steve Wozniak, founded the company working in a garage.

Jobs ended the five-year relationship with Brennan just as the firm was taking off and when she became pregnant with their child.

Jobs denied being the father of the couple's daughter, Lisa, for years after she was born in 1978.

"He gave me a fiery look. Then he rushed out of the house ."

A DNA test proved Jobs wrong.

Jobs declared to her that "if women were good, they wouldn't have labour pain"