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| Playboy founder Hefner dies aged 91 | Playboy founder Hefner dies aged 91 |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Hugh Hefner, founder of the international adult magazine Playboy, has died at the age of 91. | |
| Playboy Enterprises Inc said he passed away peacefully at home, from natural causes. | |
| Mr Hefner began publishing Playboy in his kitchen at home in 1953. It became the largest-selling men's magazine in the world, shifting seven million copies a month at its peak. | |
| Cooper Hefner, his son, said he would be "greatly missed by many". | |
| He paid tribute to his father's "exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer," and called him an advocate for free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom. | |
| Mr Hefner's trailblazing magazine helped make nudity respectable in mainstream publications and made him a multi-millionaire. It spawned a business empire that included casinos and nightclubs. | |
| The silk pyjama-clad mogul became famous for his hedonistic lifestyle, dating and marrying Playboy models. In his later years he threw huge parties at his luxurious mansions. | |
| He claimed to have slept with more than 1,000 women. | |
| Analysis: Loved and loathed, a rebel who lived his dreams | |
| By James Cook, BBC Los Angeles Correspondent | |
| Hugh Hefner was born into a strict Methodist family in Chicago. He rebelled, spectacularly, producing the first issue of Playboy in 1953. With Marilyn Monroe as its first centrefold the magazine was an instant hit. | |
| Its huge sales were driven by glossy colour pictures of nude "playmates" but it also developed a reputation for fine writing - Norman Mailer, Kingsley Amis and Ray Bradbury - were among its contributors. | |
| Hugh Hefner lived the lifestyle portrayed in the magazine. His Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, where he died surrounded by friends, epitomised an adolescent's dream. | |
| He was attacked by feminists - accused of reducing women to sexual toys - but he styled himself as the godfather of the sexual revolution. |