WHAT do you buy the millionaire who already has everything? This year the rich are turning to the most fascinating subject they know – their rise to fame and fortune.

Peter Fincham, the multimillionaire television executive who had to quit as BBC1 controller in October after a row over a misleading trailer for a programme about the Queen, is circulating a private version of This Is Your Life about his father, Arthur.

He brought together family members to talk about his father’s lively past, including his days of dancing and courting in the 1950s.

Peter Fincham, 51, who made an estimated £12m from the sale of Talkback, the production company founded by Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, said his father was initially sceptical but when he got involved in the project, “it bought back a flood of memories for him. The film will be exhibit A in our archives”.

Richard Williamson, whose company eDv made the Fincham film, said demand for his productions, which can cost nearly £50,000, is booming. “The films encapsulate the spirit of Christmas because it’s about celebrating family and the passing of time.”

He says foreign royals, members of the House of Lords, English rugby stars and American tycoons are also employing historians and film-makers to record their lives.

Sir William Barlow, the multimillionaire former chairman of the Post Office, will star in his own family movie commissioned by his son Ian as a Christmas present.

He is enthusiastic about his present: “This film is something for the family, taking the story forward.” Sir William, 83, has already featured in a film about his father, Albert, who was one of the first soldiers to go “over the top” at the Somme in 1916.

Bloomsbury Films has just made a celebratory movie for a Russian businessman, but others prefer to have their life story preserved between leather covers. A Los Angeles entrepreneur who goes by the name of Clinton has just asked Mint Lifestyle, a Beverly Hills “concierge”, to recruit a historian to write the history of his own family as a Christmas morning surprise for his parents. Such 150-page books can cost up to £100,000.

Clinton said he was inspired by There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a turn-of-the-century Californian oil tycoon, a similar background to his own.

“I am not afraid if the writer unearths a few skeletons in the family closet. In fact that might be fun, because Mint are only producing 15 copies of the book,” Clinton said. “We shall just have to make sure no one outside the family reads it, but even if they do, well, it’s history. It’s about legacy.”

Michael Griffith, 67, from Shrewsbury, was persuaded by an old public-school friend to commission a biography of his life, which includes jobs as a bounty hunter and tea planter. “This was not about my ego and I would rather hide under a bush,” Griffith said, “but my friend Christopher Scott was very keen. The project will be completed by Christmas.”

Louise Millar, 42, managing editor of Memoir Publishing, charges £5,000 to ghostwrite a 160-page autobiography, and provides 25 hardback copies as part of the package. “We conduct about 18 hours of interviews over five days,” she said. “The subject of the book will then read the proofs for approval. I have worked with a psychoanalyst and an Indian woman who had done very well in the UK but wanted her family to remember the poverty she had escaped.”

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