WHEN David Cassidy was three years old, his parents divorced.

His father, Broadway performer Jack Cassidy, was a serial philanderer, manic depressive and alcoholic. When he died in 1976 alone in a fire in his apartment, father and son had not spoken for nine months.

Cassidy's fractious relationship with his father, combined with the pressure of being one of the world's most famous pop idols, took its toll. He turned his back on the phenomenal Seventies success of The Partridge Family and became a virtual recluse for three years.

It wasn't until he underwent intensive therapy for depression, much of which stemmed from his dysfunctional childhood, that he could lay his demons to rest.

So it was hardly surprising when, at the age of 40, Cassidy became a father himself, and his son, Beau, the centre of his life.

Beau is now 13 and Cassidy's life still revolves around him. 'I learned to be a great father by doing everything my own father didn't do,' says the 54-year-old performer.

'My father wasn't around for me, but I make sure I'm always there for Beau. Every time he has a basketball or baseball game, I become the team's assistant coach. I've been to every game he's ever played, and to every one of his school concerts.

'It's so much better being a father late in life. It's a good job I didn't do it when I was 20.' This is not, it must be said, a story of paternal pride that Cassidy's first child, Katie, would recognise.

Katie, who was born in 1986 following Cassidy's affair with actress Shirley Benedon, does not warrant a single mention on her father's official website, and claims that he has turned his back on her.

According to Shirley, whose on-off relationship with Cassidy lasted nearly two decades and survived his first two marriages - to actress Kay Lenz and horse breeder Meryl-Ann Tanz - he has refused to acknowledge his daughter.

Shirley married a physician called Richard Benedon when Katie was four and it is him, not David, who has effectively been her father.

When Katie tried to launch her own singing career three years ago, at the age of 15, with a cover version of her father's most famous hit, How Can I Be Sure, Cassidy broke off what little contact existed between them.

Talking for the first time about the rift, he says: 'I wasn't allowed to meet Katie until she was 12, but I have never once not been there for her financially. I have quadrupled what the court asked me to pay for her maintenance for many years because I wanted to do the right thing.

'When I did meet her, she would come for a day or a weekend with us in Las Vegas. My son, Beau, loved spending time with her. But I couldn't support somebody being taken out of school at 15 to go and record her father's song, for obvious reasons. How can anybody disrupt a child's development like that?

'So, since then, we haven't had a relationship. It is a huge sadness in my life, but there is nothing I can do about the influence that has been really pervasive in her life. She has been pushed in a direction I don't approve of.

'Going to celebrity events at that age and using my name to get into certain situations is not a good environment for a kid. You can't just go after fame without honing your talent first. THIS is a tough business and I don't want my daughter ending up like Michael Jackson, who seems a lost human being who has no concept of reality and is driven only by a need for adulation.

'It seems that is what is happening to Katie. And so, unfortunately, there hasn't been any contact between us. She will be 18 next week and it's sad for her, sad for me and sad for my son that we won't be able to celebrate her birthday with her.

'I hope that one day we can be together again. At some point, I hope she will see the sense of what I've said. It will happen, but not until she gets away from the bad influences in her life and is on her own.' Cassidy is a man who refuses to allow negative thoughts to cloud his positive outlook on life - an outlook that has taken several years to achieve.

From being an unknown 20-year-old actor, he shot to overnight success with The Partridge Family. Overnight, his life changed.

In the early Seventies, he was the world's highest-paid solo male artist, with fan clubs bigger than those of Elvis and The Beatles.

At his farewell concert in London in 1974, the hysteria among his fans was such that 1,000 of them needed medical treatment.

Cassidy admits that during those few years of adulation he slept with dozens of women, although he insists that they weren't fans.

'I was never interested in younger girls,' he says. 'When I was 20, I was into 25-year-olds, and when I was 25, I was into 30-year-olds. I preferred mature women. LIFE as a 20-year-old, red-blooded heterosexual guy in the Seventies was good. I slept with loads of women, but now it seems like it was another lifetime. It was also lonely. I could never have a proper relationship because I was never in one place long enough.

'I remember once playing Madison Square Garden in New York and then having to be trundled into the boot of a car and taken to a grotty hotel in Queens to escape the fans. I sat all alone in a filthy room without even a change of clothes, waiting for the fans to go.' Eventually, it got too much for him and he quit The Partridge Family. He had made around $500million for other people but all he got when he left was a cheque for $15,000, having unwittingly signed away the rights to his name and image.

Virtually broke, he became a depressive recluse and turned to drugs and alcohol for support. For a few years it looked as if he had inherited his father's propensity for self-destruction, until he had therapy for depression.

'Self-destructive people choose to be sick and die or become alcoholics and drug addicts and, for a while, it looked like I was heading that way. But I chose to go into analysis because I wanted to wake up in the mornings and get happy.' What also helped turn his life around was being reunited with the woman who was to become his third wife. In 1973, he met songwriter Sue Shifrin, who had written hits for Tina Turner and Cliff Richard.

'We were both signed to the same record label and we became romantically involved in a Seventies way for a couple of years. We never actually went out on a date together but we saw each other when we could and became great friends.

'We lost touch when she married but then, in 1986, she contacted me through my attorney. She'd been through a rough time, too, so we met up, had dinner and we've been together ever since.

'I never thought I would find that in my life. Marriage was a concept I couldn't embrace. You have to be willing to work at it and make compromises every day. Every morning I wake up and think: "What can I do for Sue today?"

instead of "What can I do for myself?"

'Sue had been told she could never have children, so it was a miracle when she found she was pregnant. And it changed our lives, dramatically, for the better. I refused to work for the first six months of Beau's life because I didn't want to miss a second of being with him.

'I'm not going to do a solo tour again because I promised my son I wouldn't.

The year before last, I went to Australia for six weeks and I'd already booked the tour to come to Europe and the UK when Beau said: "Dad, will you please stop.

Haven't you done this long enough?"' Fans will have to console themselves with a DVD and video recording of David's last concert at London's Apollo Hammersmith theatre in May, which is released this week on the VCI label.

Although the scenes at his UK tour this year were not of the same intensity as 30 years ago, the sight of thousands of middle-aged matrons trying to touch their teenage idol is still pretty bizarre.

After he played Blackpool, fans offered to buy his used laundry from his hotel. One woman even offered to exchange a twoweek holiday in Spain for just one pillowcase upon which her idol's head had rested.

'I don't understand it now any more than I did then,' says Cassidy.

sorry again, I messed up the article title...David Cassidy: Self-destruction, countless affairs, and the secret daughter I'm not ready to see