Complicated truth behind entertainer's perfect life

For fans of Bill Cosby, the American entertainer, the bombshells keep dropping. On 16 January, there was the murder of his only son, Ennis. Two days later Mr Cosby was revealed as the apparent victim of a paternity extortion racket. Now, about that, Mr Cosby is revealing a more complicated truth.

As Mr Cosby returned to work on the set of his Cosby sitcom in New York on Monday, first snippets were being aired of an interview with Dan Rather of CBS. In it, Mr Cosby admits that he indeed had an affair with the mother of the child who is claiming to be his illegitimate daughter.

The young woman, Autumn Jackson, 22, and one other woman, were arrested by Manhattan police on 18 January on charges that they had tried to shake down Mr Cosby for $24m. Ms Jackson, police said, had threatened to go public with her story that the star was in fact her father.

When news of the arrest broke, sympathy was already gushing for Mr Cosby, who had just hurried to Los Angeles to grieve his son's violent death. Ennis, 27, was apparently gunned down on a Los Angeles highway while changing a wheel on his Mercedes.

So powerful is Mr Cosby's image, nurtured by his sitcom roles on television as well as his best-selling book, Fatherhood, as the perfect American father and family man, to believe the woman seemed impossible, even in bad taste. There was no truth in the story, he said through his publicists.

The Rather interview, which has still to be aired in full, is beginning to suggest otherwise, however. Mr Cosby, who has been married for 33 years and had five children with his wife, admits plainly that he did have liaisons with the mother of Autumn, Shawn Jackson. He denies that he is the father of Autumn. Even that denial, however, is framed by uncertainty.

Asked if he could be the father, Mr Cosby said: "There is a possibility ... The mother told me, the woman that I had a rendezvous with, told me I am the father. On the birth certificate, it is not my name."

As Mr Cosby tells more, so the case against Autumn Jackson and her accused accomplice, Jose Medina, who are both free on bail, may fall apart. Affection for Mr Cosby may not be dented. But the fans' misty-eyed confusion between TV character and real-life person is over.