After all the talk of sex and biting and the use of women's underwear, Marv Albert is still quick to defend his sex life.
Sitting with fiance Dee Heather Faulkiner for an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, the disgraced sportscaster acknowledged having a relationship with a transvestite during an "experimental phase of my life.""How would you describe your sex life?" Walters asked Faulkiner.
"I'd say it's pretty ordinary," she replied.
"Hey!" Albert interjected.
"In comparison," she added.
It was Albert's first interview since his high-profile trial and sentencing only two weeks ago, and he accused his accuser, longtime lover Vanessa Perhach, of lying and emotional extortion.
"I thought she was my friend. What happened, what she did to me, is just unbelievable," Albert said in the interview to be broadcast on ABC's "20/20" tonight.
Albert said he had a "purely sexual" 10-year relationship with Perhach and suggested that she brought forcible sodomy charges against him because she knew he was about to get engaged to someone else.
"She was trying to extort me," he said.
The 56-year-old sportscaster was accused of throwing the woman on a bed in a Virginia hotel room last February, biting her on the back more than a dozen times and forcing her to perform oral sex.
The allegations about his sex life led him to abruptly stop the trial and plead guilty to assault and battery. He offered a grudging apology and was spared jail time if he stays out of trouble for a year.
Asked whether he needed therapy because his sex life was kinky, Albert replied: "No, I really feel that's been overrated."
Albert said he never tried to force oral sex on Perhach and that he bit her at her request. Perhach's suggestion that he became angry because she refused to bring another man into their bed for three-way sex was her way of trying to explain why he snapped, he said.
"I did do it once with . . . Vanessa and another woman," he said. "But she was the one - for the most part - who did the suggesting."
He called tapes of an upset Perhach talking to police the night of the incident "an Academy Award performance."
Albert also called "a complete fabrication" the accusation of another woman, Patricia Masten, who said Albert - wearing women's panties and a garter - bit her and tried to force her to perform oral sex in a Dallas hotel room.
"She told me she had a crush on me and she wanted to have sex," he said. "I did not."
Faulkiner said she felt as if she had "a stake driven through my heart" when she heard the charges and conceded she thought about breaking off the engagement.
But she said the only thing she believes Albert is guilty of is bad judgment.
Albert, who was fired by NBC and resigned from the Madison Square Garden cable network, said he had received hundreds of job offers.
"I would like to sit it out for a while," he said.
Albert is undergoing therapy as part of his court-ordered probation. He said it has been "extremely helpful" in helping him learn about why people are unfaithful.