Game show host Bob Barker admitted he engaged in "a little hanky panky" with a "Price Is Right" model but denied sexually harassing her.
The 70-year-old Barker, a widower since 1981, said that he was involved with Dian Parkinson from 1989 to 1991 and that he was going public with the affair because she had threatened to sue unless she was paid $8 million.He vehemently denied the former Playboy model and beauty queen had been threatened with the loss of her job if she didn't have sex with him.
"She told me that I had been so straight-laced and that it was time I had a little hanky panky in my life, and she volunteered the hanky panky," he said Thursday.
The producer of "The Price Is Right," Jonathan Goodson, said the complaint "is nothing but an $8 million shakedown."
Dian Parkinson, who left the CBS show last year, has an unlisted number and could not be reached for comment.
Her lawyer, Laurence Labovitz, told the syndicated TV program "Entertainment Tonight" that he found Barker's claims "despicable."
"I think that he has deliberately lied," Labovitz said. He and another lawyer for Parkinson did not return calls to their offices.
Goodson said Parkinson quit the show after 18 years, claiming that she suffered emotional stress because of "tensions between her and the other models" and that she had developed a bleeding ulcer.
Goodson said he paid her a reduced salary and medical benefits because similar payments were made to another model when an on-the-job injury prevented her from working.
Parkinson said in November that she left the show because it became routine: "I just got tired of being there." The former Miss World USA had posed for two Playboy layouts, in 1991 and 1993, and appeared in a Playboy video.
Barker, who won an Emmy as host of the game show, also spent 20 years as host of the Miss USA Pageant and the Miss Universe Pageant.
He said revealing the relationship "is embarrassing, but people will understand the truth."