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Letterman admits affairs with staff

Updated: David Letterman has admitted that a man had tried to extort him over claims he had sexual relations with female staff members. "Yes I have," he said.

david_lettermanDavid Letterman has admitted on The Late Show with David Letterman that a man had tried to extort him of $2M or disclose that he had sexual relations with female staff members from his show.

“This morning, I did something I’ve never done in my life,” said Letterman. “I had to go downtown and testify before a grand jury.”

In his testimony, he said he acknowledged the relationships with members of his staff.

“My response to that is, yes I have. Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would,” he said on the show. “I feel like I need to protect these people. I need to certainly protect my family.”

Letterman told his audience that he received a package three weeks ago from a person who claimed to have information about his sexual activities. The extortionist was said to be planning a screenplay and book unless he was paid $2M.

In a humourously-couched admission, Letterman even managed to elicit gags from the story, including audience laughter even at its most frank moments.

The New York Daily News said investigators instructed Letterman to mail a phony $2 million check to the individual, which led to the extortionist’s arrest on Thursday.

Letterman, who is 62, married his long-time girlfriend last March. They have a son who is six years old.

The Late Show airs at 12:30 tonight (tomorrow morning) on TEN. Should be worth a look.

Gives a whole new meaning to Worldwide Pants…

Source: NYTimes, AAP, Reuters

28 Responses

  1. I commend Letterman for being so gracious dealing with such an embarrassing situation. It was bizarre listening to the audience laugh and whoop when it wasn’t really called for though.

  2. “By rights Bill Clinton should be able to poke fun at Letterman for years to come”

    Hmm, not really. Clinton was an elected public official, Letterman is just a TV host. Also, Clinton was asked and he publicly lied about it whereas Letterman chose to fess up on TV rather than give the blackmailer money to shut him up, which was a smart move. He may get a lot of “dirty old man” jokes now but I doubt his career will suffer lasting damage because he’s come right out and said what happened rather than wait for the info to leak.

    The person who’s the real idiot here is the blackmailer. And the thing that shocked me is that AP has reported that the man in question is an Emmy award winning producer on 48 Hours! What on Earth was he thinking?

  3. @7.52 david letterman saids his had sex with some women who works for him on the show and everyone had a big laugh that was weird ,i dont get how that is funny when he was trying to be serious, well most of the time

  4. @Matt – remember that the audience has been ‘primed’ to laugh, and told to laugh loud and often. It was at the very start when the audience were still pretty excited and ‘pumped’ – seriously, some people were really really excited to be there, A knock knock joke would have brought the house down.

    The audience had no idea ti was a true or serious story at all. It wasn’t clear it was serious until near the end. Dave making ‘jokes’ during the story and using words like ‘hinky’ added to the weirdness and kept it light hearted enough to keep the audience thining it was going to have a punchline.

  5. I’m in New York on holiday and I was actually at the taping of Thursday’s show (yesterday). The audience reaction was really bizarre as when he first started talking about it we thought it was going to be a ‘joke’ story, laughter continued throughout most of the story until the very end. Even when he mentioned the sex most of the people still laughed. It took a while before the audience realised it was serious.

    Very very weird.

    The highlight of the show was the audience laughing at, not with, Kim Kardashian. Quite refreshing to see Americans aren’t impressed by the semi-famous for being semi-famous starlets (mind you seemed that about half the audience were ‘foreigners – hence the ‘foreigner’ jokes made throughout the show).

  6. Wow, 62 and only married last year- he got married really, really late.
    And having a six year old son- I just feel sorry for him because he won’t get to enjoy his parents when he’s older.

  7. Are we sure these were affairs? While he was a stand-up comedian, his girlfriend was writing his material. So when he got his first show, Late Night on NBC, she was hired as head writer so it would make sense he was sleeping with his staff. Is there more to it than that? or is this blackmailer an idiot?

  8. He has been with his now wife since 1986, so I doubt these claims are from when he was single.

    Not really surprising news. It puts an interesting spin on all those Clinton jokes he made long after they were past their use by date.

  9. This is no ones business but Letterman and his wife, it could have happened years ago IMO as by all reports he’s still happily married. Although I did notice some of the jokes he said last night to Madonna, BTW a great interview!

    @BrettD – I’m sure they are working on the list right now LOL

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