He's a bold, brash wheeler-dealer. And he's just about to take over the high street

The retailer Philip Green stepped up his campaign to take charge of Britain's high street yesterday with a £800m bid for some of the country's most famous stores.

Winning control of the store group Arcadia would give the flamboyant self-made businessman one of the nation's biggest retail empires.

Mr Green already owns the high street monolith Bhs, from which he has made hundreds of millions of pounds. Seizing control of Arcadia would also leave him in charge of Top Shop, Dorothy Perkins, Burton Menswear and Miss Selfridge.

The entrepreneur would become the proprietor of the largest shopping empire in Britain apart from the mighty Marks & Spencer, which he tried to buy three years ago.

Indeed, in the womenswear market, Mr Green would be bigger even than M&S with a share of 12.9 per cent compared with M&S's 12.1 per cent.

With Bhs, Mr Green has 150 large stores up and down the country. Arcadia has more than 2,000 outlets spanning chains such as Wallis and Evans. Mr Green also owns the Mark One discount chain, which has 130 branches.

The 50-year-old entrepreneur also recently held merger talks with Woolworths and has been linked with bids for the Littlewoods stores and Mothercare, the baby clothes retailer. In the past, he has bought and sold well-known names such as Jean Jeanie, Olympus Sports, Shoe Express and the whole of the Sears empire, which included Freemans mail order and the Warehouse fashion chain.

With Bhs now worth up to £1bn and wholly owned by Mr Green, he has the financial firepower to stalk the retail sector looking for pickings. And having paid himself a £162m dividend from Bhs's soaring profits this year, he has the personal wealth most corporate managers can only dream of. "Who knows," he said, when asked about his longer-term ambitions, "I don't have a long- term plan. But I'm ready, willing and able."

But nothing is ever simple with Mr Green and, by yesterday afternoon, his bid for Arcadia was already mired in controversy. The Icelandic company that Mr Green was hoping to sell some of the Arcadia chains to was raided by police and its chairman accused of fraud. Baugur, an Icelandic retailer that owns 20 per cent of Arcadia shares, has agreed to sell its stake to Mr Green and buy the Miss Selfridge, Top Shop and Top Man chains from him if his bid succeeded. The police investigation began after the chief executive of the American wholesaler Nordica accused Baugur of having forged documents when the companies terminated their business links. Baugur has denied the accusations and said they were "without foundation".

Not that any of this will faze Mr Green. Bold, brash and bruising, he cuts an extraordinary figure.

Observers say his abrasive manner makes him a hard man to work with. One former colleague says. "He runs Bhs like a medieval barony, firing people and shouting at them. As for the language, well, every other word is the 'f' word. He's up and down, shouting one moment, reasonable the next."

Mr Green is said to have once taken an underperforming store manager to task by saying: "I want you to look in the mirror every day and call yourself a c***." The manager did not work for Mr Green for much longer.

As one retail observer says: "Philip's style is very, very aggressive. He has a line for every circumstance. But he is funny, generous and can be very good company."

Mr Green is apparently fond of ringing rival retailers in London from his yacht in the south of France and goading them with remarks such as: "Still working, then?" In reality, Mr Green is an extremely hard worker. He is not a tax exile, as many people think, although his wife and family live in Monaco. Mr Green spends most weekends on his boat but works Monday to Fridays in London, staying in hotels. He used to stay at the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane but moved after that information appeared in newspapers and he started receiving begging letters.

His speaks in short sentences with a staccato London accent. Conversations are usually brief, pugilistic in style and end up with a knockout victory for Mr Green. But he likes to be liked, often ending "slanging match" conversations on a positive note. "We're still friends, aren't we?" he'll say.

Earlier this year, he held an elaborate birthday party for hundreds of guests in Cyprus, at a cost of £5m.

His style has not endeared him to many in the retail trade but he has made his own luck. Born "round the back of Croydon somewhere" his father died when he was 12 and his family moved to Buckinghamshire where he attended a Jewish fee-paying school. He was a good sportsman and was later linked with a deal to buy Tottenham Hotspur. "I've had a couple of opportunities to buy Spurs," he once said.

He started out as a shoe wholesaler, then at 21 borrowed £20,000 to set himself up in the clothing business. One way or another, Britain's high street may never be the same again.