"I got $250 million in one day," Merv Griffin grins. "One day, can you believe that?" The day was in 1986 when he sold his hugely popular game shows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune to Columbia Pictures (then owned by Coca-Cola) and retired from his 23-year-long career in television.

Apart from the game shows, Merv also hosted The Merv Griffin Show, putting the chat into chat show and interviewing everybody from Gore Vidal to Ronald and Nancy Reagan. ("I was the first to televise live from the private quarters of the White House because, of course, we were old friends.")

He says the money never felt real because he never actually saw it. But real or not, he put it to very good use. Unlike fellow chat show hosts Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, who retired into near-seclusion, Merv's wealth and personal reputation rose after his departure from television, and he currently possesses an empire worth an estimated $1 billion.

There are the eight hotels, which include the 700-room Beverly Hilton where Merv occupies a penthouse suite; there are the $20 million Challenger jet, the 127-foot yacht, two production companies, a cosmetics business and a racing stable.

"I didn't want to retire," he says firmly. "I still had a lot more ideas. It's not about money because I still don't really see it. I would never buy something I didn't really love just to acquire it."

Hotels, he says, were a natural progression. "I've said it before, hotels are talk shows with beds." His enthusiasm for talk shows without beds had begun to pall by the mid-1980s and he says he doesn't miss being in front of the cameras at all.

"After 23 years I was bored. I was asking these soap opera stars questions and I really didn't care about the answers. They'd be explaining what was wrong with the world and I'd be like, `Oh, please!' Also, the business has changed. No syndicate will allow an interview of over five minutes now. We're living in a soundbite era."

Financially he has always been a huge success, largely because he owned all of his shows rather than being owned by a network. After the Coca-Cola windfall he moved immediately into the hotel business, buying the Beverly Hilton in 1986. The most recent addition to his chain of hotels is St Clerans, a Georgian manor house in Co Galway which was once the home of director John Huston.

"I'd like to give you a reason, but really I think it was a whim," grins Kevin Deverich, president of Merv Griffin Hotels (just one of seven different companies which make up the Griffin Group) as an explanation of why Merv bought the house. It's a theory that makes sense. While the house is a fine Georgian manor it is hardly a canny business venture. The 12 rooms may be gloriously well appointed, but at £130 to £240 per night are small fry when you consider Merv's other assets.

Of course, Merv gives a rather different explanation for the purchase of St Clerans. "Well, you know, I'm in the market for buying hotels. When I was looking for a venture outside America it made perfect sense to buy a place in Ireland where my family is from," he says expansively.

"Then, of course, I knew the location. I had interviewed John in Ireland in the 1960s and had been to the house, so when I saw it was on the market I was like, `Oh, I remember that place'."

Merv could well be the person for whom the phrase "larger than life" was invented. He arrived in Ireland last week to visit St Clerans for the first time since its official opening in June, together with an entourage that included his friend and companion Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Deverich (who in a previous life was the manager of the Animals and toured with the Beatles) and a host of other Merv Griffin hotel honchos.

It is not for nothing that Merv dominated the chat-show world for 23 years. He dominates the small drawing room of St Clerans, and it is clear that when Merv talks, everybody listens, and when Merv listens, everybody talks.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this he is remarkably good company. One minute he is sweeping Princess Elizabeth into a waltz declaring "Look, Bill Clinton taught us to dance like this," and the next he is sitting down at the grand piano crying "I once sang a song called I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts and it's haunted me ever since."

It's clear that he is passionate about St Clerans and, indeed, about all his hotels. The general manager, Richard Swarbrick, describes how the chandelier in the entrance hall was raised by six inches in Merv's absence. It was the first thing he noticed when he arrived this week, saying: "That chandelier needs to come down a little, no?"

It is a warm, friendly and subtly luxurious place to stay, with photographic prints of Huston and Michael Dillon murals replacing Monet's huge Water Lilies, which from St Clerans to take by train to Dublin. (They have attempted to bring the Challenger into Galway Airport 12 times and, due to bad weather, succeeded only once. And anyway Merv likes trains.)

In the first-class carriage Griffin sits and runs through forthcoming projects, including his first album in 20 years to be released early next year, a film deal just signed with the Roger Corman studios in Galway and several TV shows.

Deverich and his other employees fire out several other plans he has forgotten.

"Look at me surrounded by grown men reminding me about my business. I drive them crazy."

Merv Griffin grins happily.