By Teri Fitsell
Donny, David or Michael. Those were your choice of teen idol if you were a pubescent girl in the western world in the early 70s. Donny Osmond, David Cassidy or Michael Jackson (who, by the way, was black then).
Jackson, of course, went on to bigger and weirder things,
while Osmond vanished for a decade or so until his return in chat show form with sister Marie (Sky 1, weekdays 4pm).
But whatever happened to David Cassidy? He was the impossibly cute, breathy-voiced lad who found fame playing Keith Partridge in hit TV series The Partridge Family (which also starred his own stepmother, Shirley Jones, and Susan Dey, later of LA Law).
The series launched his singing career with million-sellers such as If I Didn't Care and Daydreamer - which in turn brought him legions of hysterical fans.
He retired from the teen scene at the ripe old age of 22, after four years of being the most screamed at man on earth since The Beatles.
Tonight's rockumentary - if you will - David Cassidy: Teenage Dream (TV One, 8.30) looks at his career, his retirement and his recent comeback in Las Vegas musical extravaganzas.
The publicists are billing it as a rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches story, although it seems unlikely that David - who was born to Broadway star parents Jack Cassidy and Evelyn Ward - ever actually came within a feathered haircut of anything approaching poverty.
His life has been one of flared trousers - some of them disturbingly polyester - but never ragged trousers.
However, the programme does offer a few insights into what it's like to have thousands of girls throwing themselves at you - well, clearly you're not going to throw ALL of them back, are you? - and his offstage existence and troubled home life.
Most of the more interesting gossip comes not from David himself - who, to be frank, seems a bit of a pain - but from people who knew him. One big surprise is that his best mate during his nicer-than-apple-pie-days as Keith was Alice Cooper, surely his antithesis in image and music.
Cooper offers some revelations about Cassidy the party animal, though his funniest story is how the two of them had to play golf in secret because it was considered such an uncool thing to do.
Celebs Anthea Turner and Jill Dando (filmed just a few months before her mysterious death) also appear, and 'fess up to their David-obsessed teen years.
But the best anecdotes are from Danny Bonaduce, who played Keith's redheaded brother Danny. Despite his own troubled life after The Partridge Family, Bonaduce has a cheerily cynical respect for what the series gave to the various members of its cast.
For him, that included the loss of his virginity. A Cassidy fan sneaked on to the set intent on giving her all to David. When he was a no-show, the generous lass bestowed it on 13-year-old Danny instead.
As Bonaduce gratefully smiles: "It was a case of any Partridge in a storm."
By Teri Fitsell
Donny, David or Michael. Those were your choice of teen idol if you were a pubescent girl in the western world in the early 70s. Donny Osmond, David Cassidy or Michael Jackson (who, by the way, was black then).
Jackson, of course, went on to bigger and weirder things,
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