The world is in mourning following the death of Larry King, the giant US broadcaster who attained global fame for interviewing the world’s top political leaders and celebrities alike.

King, who has died at the age of 87, held approximately 50,000 interviews in a span of six decades, including 25 years as the host of the popular CNN talk show Larry King Live.

Larry King died at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, as reported by Ora Media, a production company that King co-founded, coming days after he was treated for Covid-19.

King faced a number of health problems in recent years, including heart attacks even as Ora did not divulge in its statement the cause of his death.

He was married eight times to seven different women and had five children and two died last year only weeks apart; his daughter Chaia died from lung cancer and son Andy of a heart attack.

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The legendary host interviewed all sitting US presidents from Gerald Ford to Barack Obama and a host of renowned world leaders, including Nelson Mandela, Dr Martin Luther King and Dalai Lama.

"For 63 years and across the platforms of radio, television and digital media, Larry's many thousands of interviews, awards, and global acclaim stand as a testament to his unique and lasting talent as a broadcaster," said Ora Media in its statement.

King was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger in Brooklyn, New York in 1933 and rose to fame in the 70s due to his radio programme, The Larry King Show, on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

He launched Larry King Live on CNN in 1985 and this turned him into one of the network's biggest stars with his name crossing borders and the show viewership running into millions.

King boasted of two Peabody awards even as he was widely criticized for being non-confrontational and posing open-ended questions leading to his retirement from CNN in 2010.

CNN was later to replace him with controversial British journalist Piers Morgan, who earned his criticism for turning the programme to be "too much about him".

Morgan’s programme was halted three years later.

Morgan mourned Twitter on Saturday saying, "Larry King was a hero of mine until we fell out after I replaced him at CNN & he said my show was 'like watching your mother-in-law go over a cliff in your new Bentley.' (He married 8 times so a mother-in-law expert). He was a brilliant broadcaster & masterful TV interviewer."

CNN president Jeff Zucker said, in a statement, "The scrappy young man from Brooklyn had a history-making career spanning radio and television. His curiosity about the world propelled his award-winning career in broadcasting, but it was his generosity of spirit that drew the world to him."

On retirement, King hosted Larry King Now on Hulu and RT and outside media he founded the Larry King Cardiac Foundation in 1988, a charity funding heart treatment for the less fortunate.