A little long.... but stick with it for comedy gold

'I feel robbed. I feel duped' It took 15 years of therapy to haul 70s superstar David Cassidy back from the brink. Jan Moir reports David Cassidy is older, shorter, odder, tougher, richer and crankier than you might imagine. When the shouted goodbyes of departing customers disturb the afternoon serenity of the hotel cocktail bar, he stops talking and looks at them, appalled. "Are they not conscious of themselves?" he says, tensing. "God, I hate people in my face like that. I mean, back off. Go away. Go into the next room and close the door." Does he ever remonstrate with others in public? "What? Yeah. In a minute. In a second. My own personal space is very protected. I don't allow people in." Well, I can see that. The Cassidy barriers are not high but they definitely run deep, the entrenched legacy of over 35 years in the public eye, most potently as a pop idol who drove millions of little girls wild. Back in the 1970s, in his pooka shell necklaces and appliquéd dungarees, Cassidy was a worldwide sensation; the limpid-eyed receptacle of a million schoolgirl crushes. But hey, as he would say, that was a long time ago. Today, at 56, he is the kind of take-charge guy who is hyper-aware of the effect he is having on others, and always in control of himself and the situation. "I can't put my arms around that," he says, when anyone in his entourage makes a suggestion he does not like. "Too intrusive," he tells me, in response to a question about money. "No way," he says, when I ask if it ever gets boring singing I Think I Love You for the thousandth time on his millionth comeback, or farewell, tour. "I am not, as you put it, like a fly trapped in amber. Not any more. That's for sure," he adds. We meet in the depths of the Dorchester in London, where Cassidy is staying during this promotional tour to publicise his new autobiography, Could It Be Forever?. Dressed all in black, he looks fit and well, probably in good shape from horse riding, about which he is passionate. Despite the lush gloom of the bar, the protective shields of his tinted glasses are up and on, and his breath smells of minty mouthwash. Like the old pro he is, he is also wearing make-up for his photographs; a cladding of foundation, plus mascara on his upper lashes, which also look as if they have been curled. When he was 29, he had an operation to remove the fat from the bags under his eyes, but since then, he says, nothing. "Not even Botox. If you look real close, I have a lotta lines. Go on, have a feel," he says, removing his glasses so I can pat his sticky cheeks. Doing this, I notice that in profile, with his lipless smile and receding hairline, he looks more like a tanned tortoise than a former pop star. It is not polite to mention this, of course. Instead, I tell him he looks like a cross between Bono and the actor Ray Liotta which, oddly enough, he does. "Whaaat? Ray? I know Ray. I don't look like Ray. A lot of people say I look like Clint Eastwood." Whaaat? I look hard for a glint of Clint but instead can only see a face that would look perfectly at home peeping between some heads of lettuce in the vegetable patch. Perhaps it is time to move on. Could It Be Forever? is not Cassidy's first autobiography, but it is his most candid to date. Weighing in at nearly 400 pages, it is a great, big brick of a book, padded out with testimonials from the likes of Petula Clark ("David is a perfectionist and so am I") and his 16-year-old son, Beau ("He's my dad and I am darn proud of it"). Although not particularly well-written, the book does tell a gripping tale of fame and fortune found and lost, and one man's struggle to reclaim his sanity and sense of self. It makes him sad when I say that I found the dominant tone of the book to be a melancholy one. "I did not intend it to be sad; I just wanted to tell the truth," he says. "The last thing I want is for people to think that my life has been sad. It has been blessed. I mean, my God. I don't dwell on the bad bits. I just don't." In 1970, Cassidy was a young actor trying to make it in Hollywood when he was co-opted into a saccharine television show called The Partridge Family. In essence, they were the bubblegum answer to the Von Trapps and from the beginning the savvy, 20-year-old Cassidy had his reservations about the role. In real life, he was a hippy who lived up in Laurel Canyon, smoked dope and dreamed of playing dark, sophisticated dramatic roles or being the next Jimi Hendrix. "I mean, I had played a killer in Bonanza," he says. "I was doing OK." Figuring that The Partridge Family would flop anyway, Cassidy signed on as Keith, the squeaky clean elder son, and also signed away all his rights to his image and his recordings. What did it matter, he figured? The "crazy" show was going to flop anyway. Of course, the Partridges went on to be hugely popular all over the world, and catapulted Cassidy, the show's heartthrob, into a toxic level of fame that has rarely been seen, before or since. On the back of the show's success, he launched a solo pop career. Hits such as Cherish and Could It Be Forever? anointed his global dominance and his popularity soared to an extent that today's pygmy stars, such as Robbie Williams or Britney Spears, can only dream about. At the height of his powers, Cassidy was the highest-paid solo performer in the world, breaking concert box office figures in America, Australia and the UK, and selling over 25 million copies of each of his singles. In the four year period from 1970-74, he made over $8 million, a fantastical sum at the time. Yet he ended up with almost nothing, ripped off by a serious of duplicitous business associates and poorly drafted contracts that did not protect him. Very few stars have risen so high, but ended up with so little, or been so keen to flee from the spotlight. When a fan was killed in the crush at one of his London concerts in 1974, Cassidy retired from showbusiness and went into a long, mental decline. Two marriages failed, and he relied on the spare rooms of friends and the help of psychiatrists to get him through. Now, he feels that part of the problem was that he never quite got over being abandoned by his father when he was only three years old. Therapy was his saviour, even if one sometimes wonders if he will ever be able to truly relax on the sunlit uplands. "Fifteen years on the couch helped. Woow! I have done so many different approaches to how to peel the onion; different types of analysis and self-examination. Even Reikian breathing technique. I mean, my God. Pant, pant, pant, pant, woof, woof. Like a dog. I did some weird things once or twice, but I never got into primal screaming like my friend John Lennon did," he says, in what must be the most delicious namedrop of the century. Lennon, says Cassidy, was really into transcendental meditation but felt that "the Maharaji was bullshit, he saw through all that but thought the TM technique worked." Why did he end his therapy? "You know, a lot of teardrops fall on that couch. I was clinically depressed. Not suicidal, just very lost," he says. "I didn't really decide to end it, I just kinda got happy. Now I feel healed. I have a scar, it is tender, but it does not hurt any more. I can talk about my father and ex-wives without getting... hurt any more." Now happily married to songwriter Sue Shifrin, he dotes on their son, Beau, and his 20-year-old daughter Katie, from a previous relationship. "We are all like this," he says, crossing his fingers. There is much to admire about Cassidy, who has done well to pull himself back from the brink and live his life without bitterness. He has rebuilt his fortune by creating Las Vegas shows such as The Rat Pack Is Back! - much copied around the world - and by shrewd investments. Capable of still producing an emotional crumple in middle-aged female fans who can still remember all the words to How Can I Be Sure, he tours and sings the old hits because people still want him to. Somehow he survived the long-haul damage of 1970s pop celebrity and remained respectful of his fans - unlike those, such as Gary Glitter and Michael Jackson, who went over to the dark side and took advantage of them instead. "I thank my fans for everything," he says. Signing autographs in a bookshop this morning, they thanked him, too, even if some of their motives were not as wholesome as they could be. Cassidy hates it, he says, when something he has "personalised" ends up on eBay. "I feel robbed. I feel duped. How could I not? You know, people have tried to profit from me my whole life and it still makes me feel cheap," he says, nodding his old tortoise head. "I can't put my arms around that. At all."