Читать книгу Notorious: The Maddest and Baddest Sportsmen on the Planet - Richard Bath - Страница 15

Squeaky-clean NBC sports pundit Marv Albert’s popularity took a dive in 1997 when America’s favourite grandfather was charged with sexual assault and battery. He was alleged to have repeatedly bitten former girlfriend Vanessa Perhach on her bum and back (he broke the skin in twelve places) before forcing her to perform oral sex on him and forcibly buggering her. Marv initially denied the charges, but when he offered a plea-bargain and copped a guilty verdict on the charge of misdemeanour assault charges, his ratings went below zero.

Worse was to follow in 1998 when, during investigations into the murder of 58-year-old dominatrix Nadia Frey, police found Albert’s name and number among her possessions, though there is no suggestion that he was connected to her murder. Frey specialised in ‘restraining, spanking and daipering men’, and bad penny Perhach quickly popped up to allege that she and Marv had had three-way sex with New York’s most popular dominatrix, who also went under the name of Mistress Hilda.

Marv denied Perhach’s colourful assertions and although his career never quite hit the same level as it had before he was fired by NBC in 1997 after he pleaded guilty for assault on Perhach, he was allowed back at the station by 1999.

Marv is by no means the only commentator to run foul of his employers though. There have been plenty of other sports television presenters to have come a cropper Stateside, with Dallas Cowboys great, turned television pundit, Michael Irvin being one famous example of a man who gave his squeaky clean American network a dilemma when he was charged with cocaine and marijuana possession.

Things aren’t much different across the Pond. David Icke may have dominated the loony English TV presenters’ competition, but iconic English football commentators Frank Bough and Gerald Sinstadt did their best to hold their ends up, as it were. In 1989, the smooth-talking, jumper-wearing Bough was exposed by a national newspaper as a serial swinger who spiced up life with a few lines of coke while watching sex parties with his hookers. The 71-year-old was sacked by the BBC, but started to rebuild his television career in the independent sector. That all ended in 1992 when Bough was caught visiting a Miss Whiplash sex den. That was over and out, thanks Frank.

Even more disturbing—and this was akin to finding out that Dickie Davies worships Satan and cuts the heads off black cats in his garden shed—was the day when a 64-year-old Sinstadt was arrested at a hard-core porn cinema and charged with gross indecency. Which was, well, gross. Police later dropped the charge, but the damage was done.