Tel Aviv - Disgraced Israeli entertainer Dudu Topaz, arrested for plotting attacks on senior media executives, killed himself in prison early Thursday morning, the Israel Prisons Service said.

The 63-year-old former television star used a chord from an electric kettle to hang himself in the showers of a prison near Ramle, south-east of Tel Aviv.

Topaz's trial was slated to resume on August 25. Shortly after his arrest at the beginning of June, he admitted to masterminding the savage physical attacks on two television executives who had rejected his ideas for comeback programmes, and on an actors' agent.

He was also accused of ordering an attack on a newspaper editor who had rejected his idea to write a regular column.

A talented, ebullient and polished entertainer, Topaz was once known as Israel's "king of ratings" because of the popularity of his low-brow television show.

But the man born David Goldberg also had trouble keeping his not- inconsiderable ego and hubris in check, regularly making headlines for his off-screen antics.

In 1995 he reacted to a negative review of his TV show by attacking the critic responsible, breaking his glasses because "he doesn't understand what he sees anyway. " He paid the critic thousands of dollars in compensation.

Seven years later he was accused of kissing a female security guard against her will. He reacted to the accusation by trying to do the same thing to a female radio reporter covering the case, which in the event was dropped though lack of evidence.

That same year he bit a Latin-American actress on the shoulder during a live broadcast.

For many, however, Topaz's most notorious moment came long before commercial television catapulted him to fame.

Speaking at a election rally for the left-of-centre Labour Party days before the 1981 general elections, Topaz used an ethnic slur term to describe supporters of the right-wing Likud Party, many of whom are Jews with origins in Arab countries.

He admitted, in an interview with Israel Army Radio, that "there are two of me," one a person who wanted to do good, the other, "a vindictive and unforgiving person." "

So long as his television show brought in high ratings and concomitant high advertising revenue, television executives were prepared to turn a blind-eye, or at least excuse, his less savoury antics.

But Topaz seemed unaware that viewing tastes shift and the man whose show was once the high-point of the television week for many Israelis, found himself off the screen by 2005, as Israeli television began broadcasting local versions of such reality shows as Big Brother and Survivor, which came to dominate the ratings.

Topaz professed himself bewildered by the change in his fortunes, telling Army Radio that those who commissioned the reality shows were "out of touch" and did not know what needed to be broadcast on television.

He was arrested in early June, and after several days, confirmed the swirl of rumours that he had hired hired the men who savagely beat Channel 2 television executives Avi Nir, in November 2008, and Shira Margalit in May, as well as actors' agent Boaz Ben-Tzion at the turn of the year.

"They didn't want me on television and I decided to take revenge," he reportedly told his police interrogators.

Topaz tried to commit suicide shortly after his arrest, by injecting himself with a high amount of insulin, but survived after being rushed to hospital.

After that attempt, he was placed in a cell with five other inmates, to decrease the chances he would be left alone. The cell was also monitored 24 hours a day by closed-circuit video, but the showers, where he was found, were not.

The Prison Service said it intended launching an enquiry into the circumstances of Topaz's death. (dpa)