On this afternoon's show, Seán will be chatting to Paul Strohm, whose biography of Geoffrey Chaucer tells the untold story of the writer of The Canterbury Tales - and the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

You can listen in live to Seán and Paul today at 4pm here: http://www.newstalk.com/player/

But Chaucer isn't the only famous person to have a chequered past we've all forgotten about. Here are five other celebrated men whose infamous lives have stayed out of the public's memory...

• Charles Dickens ditched his wife with a series of horrible letters 

The beloved British writer of such classics as Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities dumped his wife (and the mother of 10 of his children) is a rather unbecoming way.

Catherine Hogarth, by all accounts, piled on a few pounds after giving birth to all those children, leading Dickens to get himself an 18-year-old mistress. When his affair was revealed to the public in 1858, the writer sent several letters to newspapers defaming his wife – calling her a donkey, an unloved mother, incapable of loving her children and his intellectual inferior.

And then he got custody of nine of his children taken away from her.

• Einstein issued his wife a set of bossy demands

Albert Einstein may have been rather forward looking when it came to physics, but the Nobel Prize-winner had some very backward thoughts on the role of wives.

In 1914, the genius scientist’s marriage to Mileva Marić had become so fraught, he set her a list of conditions she had to obey in order for the pair to stay together:

1. You will make sure:
1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.
2. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:
1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or travelling with you.
3. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:
1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.
4. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behaviour.

A few months later, Mileya left him and took their sons to Zurich.

• Oscar Wilde's past in north Africa 

Irish playwright Oscar Wilde is still celebrated far and wide as one of the greatest wits the world has ever known. But his predilection for engaging young teenage male prostitutes in Algeria isn't normally rattled off in the same sentence about his wall paper needing to go. 

André Gide, a French Nobel laureate for literature, describes in his autobiography how he and Wilde travelled through the north African country, and spent part of their time with young male prostitutes:

Wilde took a key out of his pocket and showed me into a tiny apartment of two rooms… The youths followed him, each of them wrapped in a burnous that hid his face. Then the guide left us and Wilde sent me into the further room with little Mohammed and shut himself up in the other with the [other boy]. Every time since then that I have sought after pleasure, it is the memory of that night I have pursued. 

• Johnny Cash almost wiped out a species of endangered birds 

The man in black crashed his truck when driving through the Los Padres National Forest in California. As the vehicle caught fire, instead of raising the alarm, the deep-voiced singer abandoned the wreck to go fishing.

The fire spread, burning down almost two square kilometres, and killing 47 California condors – a rare and endangered species of bird. Which, at the time, was about half of the entire population.

The US government took Cash to court, eventually setting for $82,000 – despite having forked over nearly $30m to set up the condor conservation project.

And how did Johnny Cash react? By unapologetically saying: "I don't give a damn about your yellow buzzards."

• Sean Penn tied Madonna to a chair and assaulted her for hours 

Sean Penn is a beloved Hollywood A-lister, a two-time Academy Award-winner, and a noted philanthropist whose selflessness has seen him raise awareness of countless global issues.

But in the 1980s, the actor married pop-icon Madonna, and their turbulent relationship was full of notorious arguments and drunken spats - and one case of dropped police charges. 

Only 25 at the time, Penn broke into his estranged wife’s home where she was alone. Grabbing her, he tied Madonna to a chair, and then physically and emotionally assaulted her for hours. Then, after untying her so she could go to the bathroom, the singer bolted for freedom and the police picked up a very inebriated Penn.