In the end the question isn't whose picture has been taken by Terry O'Neill.

The question is whose hasn't. No-one who's anyone, that's who. From Sinatra to Mandela, from Raquel Welch to Amy Winehouse, or, as a new book of his work has it, from AC/DC to Catherine Zeta Jones, O'Neill has photographed them all.

Politicians, royalty, pop royalty (he's shot both Queen and the Queen), movie stars (including every James Bond) and models and on and on and on. He's not long back from photographing Pele in Brazil and the thrill of it is still fresh.

Give him a name and he'll give you a story in his soft East End voice, the Londoner in him undiminished from his years on the road. David Bowie? "The coolest guy I ever met. He was on drugs when I met him." Michael Winner? "He'd ring me every morning without fail. He was quite a clever man, Winner - He used to love getting in the newspapers." Over the years he became friends with many of the people he shot. Sometimes it went further than that.

O'Neill tells his stories happily, quickly, like he's told them a million times. Of course he has. Because every day someone will ask him about some star or other. What were they like? What did he see? He is 75 years old, has survived cancer and heart bypass surgery. He sits silver-haired and avuncular in his office in a plush building near Marble Arch talking easily about his gilded past. That gilding has been burnished by the retelling over the years. It's hard to chip it away to find the man behind the stories. He knows what you want to know and you just have to mention a name and he's off, scrambling into his memories.

Look hard enough, though, and you can see his life story in the photographs. It's a story that began just before the war and has stretched to the end of celebrity (he thinks it's finished now). So let's focus in. This is Terry O'Neill's story in six pictures. Hold still please.

1| Autumn 1962 Abbey Road Studios' backyard

In the beginning were The Beatles. Actually in the beginning was Rab Butler, but we'll get to that in a moment. It's Terry O'Neill's early days. He's been hired by the now-defunct newspaper The Daily Sketch. This wasn't the plan. The plan was to be a jazz drummer. The plan was to become an air steward for British Airways so he could fly to New York once a week and play in jazz clubs there. But by chance he'd taken a picture of a man in a pinstripe suit sitting in the airport surrounded by African tribesmen. The man in the suit was the Tory home secretary. A journalist had spotted O'Neill taking the picture, and told him his editor would like to see it. The editor did. Bought the picture. Eventually gave him a job. "I told the guy I didn't really know what I was doing. I couldn't believe these things were happening to me."

Now it's 1962 and he's been sent down to Abbey Road to take a picture of a group nobody had heard of. "It turned out to be The Beatles." He was of a similar age and a not too dissimilar background. They became friends. He got invited to Beatle weddings in the years ahead.

Like them, O'Neill was a war child. "I grew up in an air raid shelter. My dad went to work for an aeroplane company during the war and they built an air raid shelter in our garden. I was in there every night from six to six."

His dad was a drinker. O'Neill didn't see much of him. "Not that I minded – if he's not there you don't notice. He went through a big drinking period after the war and then he suddenly gave up and straightened himself up. But he never came to sports day or anything like that. Then I was 16 and I moved out, unfortunately, sadly for my mum. I chose to move away from both of them."

Jazz was his early love. He played in American servicemen's clubs around his home city of London but photography took over. Accidentally.

The Beatles picture wasn't used for a while, but on a slow news day it was put on page one. The paper sold out. "The Daily Sketch thought: 'Christ, pop music must be the way.'"

The paper asked him which other bands to photograph. He suggested the Rolling Stones. "So I went to photograph them and the paper was horrified by how decrepit they looked. They said: 'We'll run this, but we've got to get a picture of a good-looking group.'" He took a picture of The Dave Clark Five and the paper ran both pictures as a double-page spread.

The sixties had started. So had O'Neill. Soon he was taking photographs of pop stars and pin-ups and hairdressers and dress designers and then hanging around in the bars with them. "The sixties were the time. Don't let anyone tell you they weren't," he says, adamantly.

"We used to go to this club, the Ad Lib Club, and talk about what jobs we were going to do when this was all over because you couldn't believe it was going to last. You were doing exactly what you wanted to do. You couldn't imagine a better existence and all the people who were rich didn't matter because we were the people having the say in creating this new world."

Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll. Well, not rock 'n' roll. He remained a jazz man really. And not drugs. "I always stayed away from all that." He once saw Stones guitarist Brian Jones out of his head in Malaga airport. He didn't raise his camera. "He was collapsed on the floor and I didn't take a picture because it was unfair. As it so happened he was near the end of his life. But when I first met him he was in charge of the Stones. I saw what happened to him. He totally lost it and Keith and Mick couldn't take it any more. Drugs change things."

No drugs, then. What about sex? Ah, well, that's a slightly different story.

2| Marianne Faithfull London, 1964

You once said, Terry, that to take a woman's photograph you have to fancy her. "Well, I said it -" He answers. Pause. Then he reconsiders. "Yeah, I do actually. You have to find something attractive about them." When Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham brought round a very young Marianne Faithfull and said "she's just not sexy" (let's just say the tenets of feminism took another decade to begin to be absorbed), O'Neill's answer was to put her in a basque and stockings. "So we did all that and you can see she's still not. She was a very nice girl. He brought her over to the office one day and I could see what he meant. She wasn't sexy sexy."

I'm guessing Jean Shrimpton was "sexy sexy". O'Neill loved photographing her. "She was the best model ever."

They were closer than that. In fact O'Neill has been linked with some of the most beautiful women in the world. Let's play a game, Terry, about relationships. Yes or no.

Jean Shrimpton. "Yeah. I went out with her. She was a really nice person."

Julie Christie? "Yeah."

Priscilla Presley? "Yeah."

Ava Gardner? "I knew her well."

Raquel Welch? "No. We were really good friends."

Who was your first serious relationship? "Julie Christie." Right. That puts Donna from primary school into perspective.

Looking back he doesn't feel all these women, all these lovers is such a big deal. "Then you seemed to sleep with anybody. I don't know why. There was no Aids around. People just automatically went to bed."

And maybe eventually you'd get married. O'Neill did. To the actress Vera Day, "the British Marilyn Monroe". He was 21, too young to marry, he'd later say. The couple had a son and a daughter. But America was calling.

3| Frank Sinatra Miami Beach, 1968

Ava Gardner was O'Neill's entree to Frank Sinatra's world. The Hollywood star wrote her former husband a letter of introduction. "He took the letter, looked at me and went: 'Right, you're with me.' Then he totally ignored me for three weeks and I could go anywhere with him. I realised that was the secret. That was my first real serious lesson in photography. I realised afterwards what a gift he'd given me, you know? I could go anywhere at all. He never queried me. When I look back now I realise the access he gave me. It was incredible and I realised that was the secret of being a great photographer. Always fade into the background."

That suited O'Neill anyway, he says. "I'm shy." He sees the look on my face. "I am, in real life."

Soon the movie studios were hiring him to take photos. He photographed Lee Marvin, Paul Newman, Raquel Welch in a bikini. On a cross. "She said to me one day: 'I'm going to get crucified for wearing this bikini in One Million Years BC.'" My mind then starts thinking -"

And yet his wife and children were back in Britain. Did he put his career before - I don't even get to finish the question. "I didn't mean to but I did. I had to take all these opportunities. But it led to us growing apart."

He separated from Vera after 13 years. "The worst thing I ever did was when I walked out of my house. I can't believe I did it, but I did. You know, saying goodbye to your kids, it's not funny." You've reconciled with your children since? "It's all right now."

4| Faye Dunaway Beverly Hills, 1977

O'Neill did marry again twice. First to Faye Dunaway (he's now married to Laraine Ashton). He'd met her in 1970. They were married for four years in the eighties. He'd also taken one of the most famous Oscar photographs of her the night after she won the Best Actress award for Network.

"I got up at 5.30am and she got up at 6.30. I was shooting her for a magazine and I said: 'If you win I've got this idea for a picture of the day after the Oscars.' Because I'd noticed that people the next day are dazed. The next day the penny drops. Their money's going to go from half a million to five million and I wanted to capture all of that."

He was right about that. Not about the marriage. "No, no, no. It was a mistake and I regretted it." He once said never get involved with actresses. Yet he married two of them. "I think they're made up of their different roles and I should have known better - Women are different anyway."

5| Amy Winehouse London, 2008

O'Neill doesn't really take photographs any more. He says he's run out of people. "I don't want to do X Factor people. Showbusiness has changed. I don't want to do any of the movie stars because they're not movie stars like I knew them. They've got no aura. They're just a load of people in black suits."

He was glad to take Amy Winehouse's picture, though. She was performing at Nelson Mandela's 90th-birthday celebration in London. "I was his birthday present for a week. I had to photograph everything. I spent five, six days trying to get pictures of everyone who sang at the show. One of the singers was Amy Winehouse. I grabbed one shot of her and I was so glad I did.

"She came out of the London clinic to do the concert then went back. She was in the middle of rehab. She was a great talent and there's not many talented people around."

He took pictures of everyone who visited Mandela. When Mandela left he gave O'Neill a wave from the car. "I waved back and nearly burst into tears because I'd realised I'd been with a really great man."

6| Terry O'Neill April 2013, London

Terry O'Neill is 75 now. "I've had all my valves done. I've had cancer. I've had high blood pressure. I've had everything. Up till I was 60 I'd never been near a hospital. I've got a group of friends who are older, like Michael Caine. They're all four, five years older. I'm the only one anything's happened to. That's the funny thing. You've got to get through it. But I'm becoming more aware of how little time I've got left."

He spends his days talking about his past, but he doesn't live there. "Everything that's gone is gone. I've had a great life – I can't complain. I just wish I'd worked harder. I know it doesn't seem possible when you see what I've done. But I wish I'd done more."

What is he proudest of? "Being alive. I mean that absolutely. Because I've had some bad things. But I've survived them all. I'm pleased about that."

Terry O'Neill can tell you stories. This is his. 

Terry O'Neill is published by ACC Editions, priced £55.