Bristol United Press, January 24, 2000

I wanted Jim dead;

By Sarah Webber

The husband of HTV's former golden girl Alison Holloway has sensationally admitted taking out a contract on comic Jim Davidson.

Burt Kearns was so enraged by the Generation Game host's account of his short -lived marriage to Bristol-born newsreader he claims he set the wheels in motion to get revenge.

The high-powered American TV executive said he was embittered when Davidson tried to make excuses for his behaviour with Alison - who was the face of West TV in the 1980s - during their short marriage.

Davidson's version of alleged events came in his recent autobiography, The Full Monty, which sparked Kearns's wrath when he implied the blame lay equally with her.

Davidson, aged 45, married Alison - his third wife in 1987 - after a whirlwind romance. The high-profile couple were wed just three weeks after they met at a pantomime in Bristol.

But a Sunday newspaper yesterday reported that bust-ups followed and Alison soon had a pair of black eyes.

The 38-year-old split from the comic after only 18 months and went on to marry Kearns in 1995.

She said about Davidson: "Claiming I hit him is like OJSimpson accusing his wife of abuse."

Davidson wrote about the union: "We're like a couple of boxers.

"On the first occasion I poked her in the eye by accident. I actually went for the mouth. Thank heaven I missed, I'd have fallen in.

"I just took a playful punch. Unfortunately I caught her completely wrong.

"The second time I gave her a shiner. I threw a bunch of keys which whacked her in the eye. Just for a giggle she kept blackening it up to make it look worse."

But Kearns has now exposed what he sees as the real nature of the doomed relationship in his book Tabloid Baby.

In it he said: "Davidson didn't tell the story of kicking Alison down the stairs the day they returned from their honeymoon or her shame when she appeared on air with pancake make-up covering the bruises.

"He was blaming the victim. After weeks mulling over how to punish him I decided an old-fashioned Irish kneecapping by bullet or sledgehammer seemed most appropriate."

Kearns said he actually went as far as hiring some hitmen to put his plan into play and admits that he wanted Davidson dead.

But he backed down after two of his friends with knowledge of contract killings persuaded him against the idea.

They told him: "If you break his knees, everybody will feel sorry for him. People like that meet their own fates."

Bristol-born Alison now lives with Kearns in Los Angeles with their three- year-old son.

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