More than 16 years have passed since Malcolm McLaren's death.

And many more since his anarchistic heyday when he managed the Sex Pistols' brief, destructive career, during which he had a rock thrown through his window by his furious ex, the late Dame Vivienne Westwood, and he urinated on Richard Branson's carpet just to infuriate him.

But, somehow, the impresario of punk, fashion designer, artist and music producer is still causing chaos.

Or, at least, a death mask of his face is.

The mould was taken from his body at a London funeral parlour shortly after he died of cancer in 2010, aged 64.

Cast in a mixture of bronze powder and resin it popped up last month at Bonhams' 50 Years of Punk auction for an estimated price of £4,000 to £6,000.

And, since then, the already deeply dysfunctional McLaren family has been fighting like mad.

Starting with his elder brother Stuart Edwards, a former black cab driver now in his 80s, who put the mask in the sale – along with a Cartier watch and what he claims to be Malcolm's childhood cricket bat – after having what he calls 'a bit of a cupboard clear out'.

There's Joe Corre, Malcolm's only son with Vivienne, the Agent Provocateur lingerie entrepreneur who was cut out of his father's will but insists he commissioned and paid for the mould and death mask.

Not forgetting specialist sculptor Nick Reynolds (though not family) – son of Bruce Reynolds, reputed to have masterminded the £2.6million Great Train Robbery in 1963 – who made and is thought to have subsequently cast at least three, possibly more, sculptures from the mould.

And Young Kim, 54, the immaculately dressed Korean-born American writer who was McLaren's partner for the last 12 years of his life and his sole beneficiary, whom I met for a chat this week in her Paris apartment.

Young says she commissioned the mould (though she admits to never paying for it.). 'I just thought it was the sort of romantic 19th-century thing that might appeal to Malcolm,' she says.

'And when the funeral home suggested it, I knew if we'd ever want one in the future, this was the only time to make the mould.'

But she insists that she never gave permission for a cast to be made, let alone put on sale in a public auction.

So when it appeared in the sale catalogue last month, with the mention of several others in existence, she was hopping mad but not surprised that, once again, his family were cashing in.

'They all treated Malcolm like a cash cow. Always did. Stuart already sold all their childhood photos and wouldn't even let us see them. He'd be happy to sell anything of Malcolm,' she says 'He's that sort of person. He was always jealous.'

She is also furious with Bonhams, which she claims was 'squeezing every last drop of blood' from his legacy for profit, and didn't sufficiently check the provenance of the mask – something the Mayfair auction house disputes.

'This sale was like someone dragging his body through the streets,' she says. 'It was very, very upsetting. Obscene. Grotesque. And the worst thing is no one will tell me how many more masks are hanging around.'

Young is very bright and, as you may have gathered, not the sort to mince her words. But it is when we turn to Joe she really lets rip.

'He was so cruel to Malcolm. He'd curse at him on the phone and call him "a dirty old Jew".' Joe denies this, calling the comment 'so disgusting it's laughable'. And Young goes on: 'Once [Joe] pushed [Malcolm] down the stairs – his own father. He is not a nice man.' Joe says this is a 'fabrication... most likely [Malcolm's]. He was always making things up to excuse his bad behaviour.'

Young adds: 'He was selling T-shirts at his funeral, for goodness' sake, at £40 or £50 and in four different colours. He said they were for charity, but I doubt it. He was always more like Vivienne than Malcolm.'

It goes without saying Young loathed Vivienne.

Dismissing the late fashion maven as someone with no direction, no education and who lived on Malcolm's creative coat tails. 'Without him, she'd have been someone's housewife, if she was lucky. He created her.'

It's hard to know where to start unravelling that lot. So perhaps it's best to rewind to a happier moment in 1998, when Young met Malcolm at a Vivienne Westwood after-party in Paris and instantly fell completely in love with him.

'I saw him across the room and thought what a wonderful, wonderful man. I'd read about what he was doing at the time – managing a Chinese girl band and working with the Polish government to try to make Poland cooler.'

But perhaps because she was so much younger – 25 to his 52 – she didn't know much else about him.

For example the mad, bad Sex Pistols years. Under his 'cash from chaos' ethos, he pushed the band to extremes until it all imploded.

Sid Vicious, 21, died of a heroin overdose. The rest of the band – funded by McLaren's nemesis, Virgin boss Branson – sued Malcolm for unpaid royalties and control of their assets.

'He was completely hurt and betrayed because he created them. Without him they'd have ended up in jail,' says Young.

Or the King's Road fashion boutique he ran with Westwood, which went through several incarnations before becoming fetish shop SEX, where the Pistols were formed, where Bianca Jagger was banned for having too many airs and graces and where legendary ITN newsreader Reginald Bosanquet popped in every now and again for a pair of rubber pants to wear under his suits.

But what was immediately apparent to her was that Malcolm was a damaged man who struggled with relationships because he found it difficult to love and be loved.

'Right from the beginning, he was always trying to get rid of me, testing me, winding me up, being nasty, it was quite tiring,' she says. 'He was a bit like a wild animal if you let him loose.'

Which stems back to a dysfunctional Jewish childhood in north London. His father left when he was two and his mother, Young says, actively loathed Malcolm and his older brother Stuart and despite having plenty of money from her dressmaking factory in Whitechapel neglected them terribly.

So much so that when he was three and fell out of his cot, broke his wrist and was taken to hospital, no one visited Malcolm. No one checked up on him. No one collected him. Until eventually the hospital dropped him at an orphanage – which was where his grandmother Rose Isaacs eventually tracked him down.

Rose, whose motto was: 'To be bad is good because to be good is simply boring', favoured Malcolm over Stuart, which laid the seeds of a lifetime of jealousy and resentment. According to Young, it was only when he went to art school that he was finally happy.

Then he met Westwood, who was five years older and already had a son, Ben, and, like Young would, fell instantly in love with 19-year-old Malcolm. 'They shared a student flat. She walked around with no clothes on. He was a virgin, so it was only a matter of time,' says Young. 'And suddenly she was pregnant. She trapped him and ruined his life.'

Maybe so, but he didn't behave very well, either. He didn't visit mother and baby in hospital for at least a week. Didn't bond with Joe. Refused to be called 'Dad'. Sent him and Ben off to boarding school as soon as he could.

In fact, it sounds as if he was almost as poor and self-absorbed a parent as his mother.

'Malcolm should never have been a father. He needed to come first. Which doesn't work when you have a child. It isn't fair,' Young told me. Which is one of the reasons they never had children.

In any event, all his life he was immersed in creative projects. Managing bands. Making his own successful music. Being employed by Stephen Spielberg as his ideas man. And then he met Young – who, however tricky he was, adored him.

Some might say Joe was justified in resenting his father. But Young is protective. 'He did his best,' she says firmly. 'He was damaged.' But the whole family was strangely disconnected.

She tells me how Malcolm and the Sex Pistols once jumped into a black cab in London, only for the driver to turn around and say: 'Don't you recognise me, I'm your brother!' Malcolm duly said 'hello', carried on with his conversation, paid his brother Stuart at the end of the ride and got out.

'And that was that!' says Young.

By 2008 relations were so bad with Joe that Malcolm publicly alleged his son was selling 'fake' punk clothing – something Joe strenuously denied.

The trouble was, says Young, they had nothing in common. 'Joe was too like Vivienne. They had pretensions of being some kind of intellectual. But they were not very bright, which was boring and disappointing for Malcolm.'

The alleged stairs incident happened two years before Malcolm's death.

He'd visited Joe at his home and, when his back was turned, so Young tells it (and let's not forget Joe disputes this), Joe gave him a big shove down the stairs.

'Malcolm was clutching his back when he got home,' says Young. 'So he didn't see him after that. Not until his final hours in the hospital in Switzerland, in April, 2010, when Malcolm called for Joe, Ben and his old manager to come and visit.'

He'd been diagnosed in the October before with mesothelioma – an asbestos-related cancer. Possibly caused by sheet asbestos in the roof in SEX – which he smashed open to make it look as if a bomb had gone off.

He'd been treated at a holistic clinic in Switzerland before being transferred to hospital when his condition deteriorated. 'He was so young. It wasn't fair. He'd tried every drug once, but he'd never been a partier,' says Young.

Even on his death bed, while Joe and Malcolm finally made peace, the rest of the family couldn't be civil.

They rowed about when to break the news of his death to the Press – Young wanted some time but Joe wanted the world alerted.

They disagreed about his last words – Joe insisted they were 'Free Leonard Peltier!' which Young says is a barefaced lie. The incarceration of Peltier, a Native American accused of shooting two FBI agents in 1975, was a cause celebre for Vivienne.

Young claims that following his death, Joe had T-shirts printed with Peltier's name on. 'To have the presence of mind to do something like that!' she says sarcastically.

Naturally, they rowed over the will. Which Joe contested, claiming his father had not been of sound mind – 'it was on a scrap of paper and his writing was all over the place' – and lost.

'They think I'm just the bimbo girlfriend,' says Young. 'But I am not. I don't enjoy the fight, but I do enjoy the win.'

Even so, it all sounds terribly tiring. Not least because Young has also been battling for years to protect Malcolm's legacy, butting heads with the V&A, the Saatchi and the Met in New York over their failure to properly credit his creative input. Last year she won a case against Sony music over sampling of one of his hits.

And now it's the death mask.

Of all the fights, this has been the bitterest because for Young, who is clearly still grieving and tearful during our chat, it is so personal. 'Why would anyone want it on their wall? It is too sad. Why would Nick have made any without my express instructions?'

It doesn't help he's already made at least three. He insists he was commissioned and paid by Joe (as Malcolm's next of kin).

So Joe and Stuart both have one and a third peers out of Malcolm's giant mausoleum, which was commissioned and unveiled by Joe without consultation with Young.

'It's disgusting. So tacky and ugly. Like something from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was so upset,' she says. But, uncharacteristically, she let that one go.

'I thought, I'll let Joe have that one. I never need to see it.'

Not this time though.

In the end, after she and lawyers kicked up a very public stink, Bonhams – which denies wrongdoing – removed Stuart's mask from the sale sheet. So it was not sold, along with the cricket bat.'That's no surprise, when did Malcolm ever play cricket?!' she cries. 'But it's typical Stuart. He'd have sold Malcolm's bones if he could.'

In his defence, Stuart says, 'My wife thought [the death mask] a bit macabre and wasn't keen but as Joe had given it to me, I didn't want to disrespect him. She allowed me to keep it in the cupboard for 16 years. As we are now getting older (I am 83 and my wife now 80), it's time to sort out the house and start to get rid of stuff.'

For his part, Joe says of Young: 'The woman won't let it go. She's become his perfect last victim. She believes all the wild lies he told.'

What a miserable mess. I wonder, will any of them ever be at peace?