Serial loverat: Keith Macdonald, the soon-to-be father of 15 to 14 different women

Instead, his main preoccupation was getting his hands on some more cans of lager  -  that being pretty much the only thing that gets him out of bed each day. As he puts it: 'I always have to have a can to get myself up and started in the morning.'

Certainly the notion that Keith  -  first exposed by the Mail in 2006 as already the father of seven children by seven different women  -  may have 'matured' in recent years has proved laughable.

Instead, with wearying predictability, he has taken to styling himself as a victim.

Dressed in his now signature tracksuit bottoms and baseball cap, with a smattering of 'bling'  -  a gold chain here, a signet ring there  -  he's bleating about being 'hounded' by both the Press and his former lovers.

'I've got all these girls on my back, and I just want to get on with my life,' he says. 'All these exes are saying different things about me, and a lot of it is lies.

'They're playing games. One of my exes has been saying I've got 15 kids to 14 women, but that's not true.'

Sarah Armstrong, 19, and Danielle Little, 24, would beg to differ. This week, they too revealed they were pregnant by Macdonald.

So what does he have to say to that? 'It's all lies as well.'

Danielle Little who broke up with Keith Macdonald on Sunday

But given that he has already admitted fathering eight children by eight women  -  all within a 20-mile radius of his council flat in Washington, Newcastle  -  it's fair to say nobody would give him the benefit of the doubt.

More depressingly, with just one exception, Keith has not so much as clapped eyes on any of his offspring, generally walking away long before they are born.

Not that he sees it that way, of course. On the contrary, Keith believes that it all has very little to do with him.

'It's not my fault I've got so many children,' he tells me. 'I use condoms, but they always seem to split. It takes two to tango. And I've never denied that the eight bairns are mine. I'd like to see them, but all the mothers are too mad with me. '

It is the same story when it comes to his lack of employment. Aside from a brief stint as a trolleycollector at a local supermarket, a few weeks at Ikea and a few weeks behind the counter at a video game store (brought to a swift end when it was disclosed that he was, allegedly, simultaneously claiming benefits) Keith has never had a prolonged acquaintance with the world of work. And guess what? That's not his fault either.

'I've had jobs, but no one will touch us at the moment because of all this stuff with all the lasses. Anyway, if I was working the women would take even more money off me.'

And so, today, Keith is back on his series of taxpayer-funded allowances  -  income support of £45 a week, occasionally supplemented by a £67.50-a-week incapacity benefit for a bad back, while the council property he shares with a friend is paid for by housing benefit.

Not that there's much in the way of gratitude, of course. 'People say I'm sponging and scrounging and the kids will cost £2 million to keep  -  but I don't know where they get that figure from,' he says.

'It's not fair. I pay £5 a month towards the kids, which is deducted from my benefits at source. It's taken off automatically and I never see it. I pay my way.'

If it wasn't so horribly depressing that Keith believes his pathetic £5 monthly contribution is in any way taking responsibility, it might actually be funny. But then what did we expect?.

Mother-to-be Sarah Armstrong who claims she is having Macdonald's child and Clare Bryant, mother to his eighth born bairn

One of five children, he was born to Keith senior, a binman, and mother Jacqueline. He was raised on a council estate and was already displaying the loutish characteristics that have come to embody his adult persona when she was still a young boy.

His 74-year-old grandmother Irene Macdonald recalls how, aged nine, her grandson climbed on to a neighbour's roof and started swearing at passers-by, while shouting: 'My gran does not pay her rent.'

'In the end I had to ask for him not to come round,' she recalls. 'He used to cause me no end of trouble.'

Keith routinely bunked off school and despite the efforts of the authorities, pretty much dropped out altogether from the age of 13  -  the same year he lost his virginity.

By 15, he had fathered his first child, Jamie-Lynn, now ten, by the then 22-year-old Michelle Purvis, vanishing almost immediately she revealed she was pregnant  -  although, today, Keith's take on this, incidentally, is that he was exploited: 'I was only 14 and I didn't know what I was doing. I was drunk. If you look at it properly then she should have been done for sex with a minor.'

Within a year, he had fathered his second child, eight-year-old Kady, by 25-year-old Charlotte Anderson, who went on to take out a restraining order against him after apparently receiving a series of abusive text messages and phone calls.

Then there was Charlotte's own stepsister, 23-year-old Jordan Banks, who split from Keith after a few weeks but not before she too was pregnant.

Hot on Jordan's heels were June Garrick, then Stephanie Jubb, 25, then Stacy Barker  -  all pregnant within weeks of each other  -  and, earlier this year, Claire Bryant, who gave birth to his six-month- old daughter Paige.

And now  -  along with claims of other, anonymous women who have also given birth to Keith's children, taking the full tally to 15  -  we have 24-year-old Danielle Little and 19-year-old Sarah Armstrong, both of whom simultaneously claim to be in the first trimester of pregnancy, courtesy of Keith and his (supposed) dodgy condoms.

Keith, for his own part, insists he barely knows either of the latest two women, despite agreeing to pose for intimate photographs with one of them for a local news agency last week.

Spitting image: Mothers number five and three who both gave birth to Keith junior

'They're definitely not pregnant,' he says. 'Sarah's actually admitted to me she's not pregnant. She's just trying to get back at me for finishing with her.

Danielle's not pregnant either, or if she is it isn't mine. I didn't sleep with them  -  they're not my type.

'Sarah's been ringing me non-stop, shouting down the phone at me  -  I've just been hanging up because it's all just aggro over nothing. I'm not having them pin their kids on me.'

Little wonder that Danielle, a care worker who bucks the trend somewhat by having a job, has called time on their six-week 'relationship'.

Plans for the two of them to move into a two-bedroom rented cottage together  -  funded by, guess who, the taxpayer  -  have been shelved and, instead, she has reported Keith to the police for allegedly sending her abusive text messages.

Danielle, it should also be noted, fell pregnant to Macdonald just weeks after giving birth to her son Reece, fathered by another man.

But she seems reluctant to take any form of responsibility, insisting she was used by Keith, who filled her ear with sweet nothings then ruthlessly abandoned her.

'It's been a nightmare,' she says. 'I cannot believe he had all these other women and did not tell me.

I should have listened to the people who tried to warn me. It is the biggest mistake of my life. I feel terrible, betrayed.'

Given that Keith roams little farther than the one-mile radius around his flat, it seems astonishing that Danielle did not know about his past. 

Yet her comments are echoed by Sarah Armstrong, a local beautician who claims to be six weeks pregnant with Keith's baby, and who also says she had never heard of Keith when she met him at a bus stop a few months ago.

The bus routes of the Washington area are Keith's favourite wooing ground, on the basis that it is 'difficult for the girls to get away'. What a charmer.

Dumped: The mother of his 15th child, Danielle Little, has now finished with him

She maintains that the couple had a long love affair, and that while he initially lied to her, telling her he had 'no kids', she confronted him after Googling his name and finding that, actually, he had rather a lot of them. Keith, apparently, insisted he was now a changed man.

Within a day of meeting her, Keith had declared undying love  -  and over the next six months the couple saw each other three to four times a week, with plenty of nights out and restaurant meals (funded, one can only assume, by the taxpayer).

When Sarah discovered she was pregnant  -  she maintains that she had been told by her doctor she was still protected by her contraceptive injection, despite the fact it had officially expired  -  she says Keith was initially supportive.

To back this up she shows what, to her, is a romantic text promising commitment from the father of her unborn child. It reads: 'I tell ya I wud not leve ya hun and I am tryin 2 give ya wot ya wont x.'

'I thought that meant he would stand by me  -  but I was wrong,' Sarah now admits. Instead, Keith dumped her by telephone at the weekend  -  when Sarah also discovered he had impregnated another local girl. 'I just sat and cried,' she says.

So much for the big love affair. And little wonder that according to his grandma Keith is the 'bad apple' of the family.

Irene, of course, is in the unusual position of having several greatgrandchildren that, unwittingly, she has probably passed on the street in this small community on more than one occasion, and admits she feels at a loss to understand her grandson's behaviour.

'I'm ashamed,' she says. 'He was never disciplined when he was growing up and that is what has made him the man he is.

'His brother and sisters are not like him, at all, though, they are all decent. Even his parents have had enough of him. They feel exactly the same as me  -  sick of the sight of him.'

Nor is she the only family member to reserve harsh words for Keith. Great uncle Charlie, a former miner, describes him as a 'nasty piece of work' who has, he claims, taken hundreds of pounds from him over the years. 'He only comes to see me for money and he gets ratty if I don't give him any.

'He turned up at the door last Christmas and told me he needed money to pay a court fine or they were going to send him to prison. He owes me more than £1,000 now.'

Like Irene, Charlie also takes a dim view of Keith's promiscuity, describing him as a manipulative drunk. 'He gets canned up on lager and goes around when he has a bit of Dutch Courage and pesters these girls. He tells you what you want to hear and he knows how to exploit the gullible really well.'

Not any more, however. He insists he has not been in a relationship 'for a whole month'  -  some kind of record, by all accounts  -  and is turning over a new leaf. 'I'm not into the lasses any more. I'm just into getting on with my life and putting them all behind me. I don't talk to random girls any more.'

The citizens of Washington will believe it when they see it.