Looking frail and pushed in a wheelchair, former child star Gary Coleman was released from Utah County Jail on Monday. The Diff'rent Strokes star was held overnight with a $1,720 bail over an outstanding arrest warrant relating to a domestic violence case.
The former child star had missed a dialysis treatment during his overnight stay. He attends a hospital three days a week due to kidney failure as a child.
Coleman was one of trio of child stars in the Eighties sitcom. Since then, one died of an overdose. One was charged with shooting a drug dealer. Now Gary Coleman has been arrested (again)...
One of them blew his money on cocaine and was arrested for shooting a drug dealer. Another was put on probation after holding up a shop. And the third member of the trio?
Well, he was picked up by police this week following 'a civil disturbance' at his home (previous entries on his CV - which in this case stands for criminal, not curriculum, vitae - include assaulting a woman in the street and allegedly trying to run over a pedestrian in his truck).
So what do you think they have in common. Is it: (a) they were all members of the same notorious gang; (b) they have all been on the FBI's Most Wanted list; or (c) they were all stars of the phenomenally popular Eighties sitcom Diff'rent Strokes?
Unbelievable as it may now seem - certainly to the show's millions of British fans - the last answer is the correct one.
Diff'rent Strokes revolved round a simple premise: the adoption by white, well-meaning millionaire Philip Drummond of two orphaned, streetwise brothers from Harlem, Arnold and Willis Jackson, played by Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges, and their enforced relationship with their new sister, Kimberly Drummond aka Dana Plato.
The show ran for eight seasons between 1978 and 1986, racking up 189 episodes, attracting the kind of ratings enjoyed by Dallas, M*A*S*H and the Dukes Of Hazzard, and turning Coleman into the highest paid actor on TV, pulling in $100,000 each programme.
Who could have imagined back then that we would now be talking about the curse of Diff'rent Strokes?
Drugs, depression, debts - these are just some of the themes that embroiled the three impossibly cute stars after they disappeared from our living rooms.
Even for those making the notoriously treacherous transition from child stardom to adulthood, it is a particularly sad and tragic story, albeit one that has unintentional comic elements.
Let us begin with Gary Coleman, whose rather threatening police mugshot - or as threatening as any man standing 4ft 8in can be - is pictured here. His latest arrest was last night said to be related to an outstanding warrant for a prior incident.
Indeed, it is difficult to believe this is the same Gary Coleman, now 41, as the diminutive rascal who used to utter the catchphrase: 'Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?'
The star, whose growth was stunted by a congenital kidney defect, has been released on bail after police were called to the home in Santaquin, Utah, near Salt Lake City, he shared with his wife Shannon Price, who at 24, is almost half his age - and almost twice his height.
The pair were married in a private mountaintop ceremony in Nevada in August, 2007.
Coleman revealed it was his first marriage, and also the first time he had been intimate with a woman.
'I wasn't saving myself,' he said at the time. 'She just happened to be the one.'
Perhaps. But the relationship has been nothing if not volatile. In July last year, Price was arrested after a domestic violence incident when she trashed her husband's bedroom during a row.
Coleman, in fact, has hardly been out of the headlines in the U.S. - mostly for the wrong reasons - since Diff'rent Stokes came to an end.
He lost most of his fortune in a protracted legal battle with his adoptive parents, who had control of his wealth until he was 18. By the end, Coleman was left with just $200,000.
After menial jobs, including working as a security guard, he was forced to sell off his personal items; among them the bowling shoes he wore in Diff'rent Strokes, which went for $100.
In 1999, he filed for bankruptcy. The previous year, he received a suspended sentence for assault after he punched a female fan who had asked for his autograph.
'She [the female fan] was getting scary,' Coleman said in court. 'The hair on the back of my neck was beginning to stand on end. I'm 4ft 8in, 86lb of nothing. I was getting scared, and she was getting ugly.'
Apart from receiving a 90- day suspended sentence and a $1,580 fine, Coleman was also ordered to attend anger-management classes. Whether or not counselling had the desired effect is questionable, however.
In 2008, Coleman and his wife faced a personal injury lawsuit following an incident at a bowling alley.
A member of the public claimed in legal papers that Coleman's wife snatched his mobile after he attempted to take her husband's picture, while Coleman tried to hit him in his pick-up truck. The case was eventually settled out of court.
There are at least two other things worthy of mention. The first was his decision to run for the governorship of California in 2003, eventually coming up, er, short, against the eventual winner, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The other: an ill-fated decision to take part in the film Midgets v Mascots, depicting a series of games between short people and five sports mascots. But Coleman was unhappy with the result: 'I don't like it when small people are made fun of,' he fumed.
His on-screen brother, of course, was making his own headlines. We know that Bridges, now 44, battled cocaine addiction for several years in his 20s.
In 1988, he was arrested and tried for the attempted murder of Kenneth Tex Clay, a Los Angeles drug dealer, who, prosecutors argued, had been shot by Bridges while he was 'high'.
Bridges pleaded not guilty to the charges, and was represented by the high-profile defence attorney Johnnie Cochrane, who successfully portrayed Bridges as someone who had been exploited by the entertainment industry, and was now being unfairly framed. Bridges was acquitted of all charges by a jury.
But in 1993, he was involved in an altercation with a tenant in his house after a disagreement about unpaid rent. The tenant attacked Bridges with a sword, who retaliated by stabbing him in the chest with a kitchen knife. The prosecution dropped the charges, concluding he had acted in self-defence.
Now, claiming to be clean from drugs and sober, Bridges has become a Christian and speaks to young people about the dangers of drugs.
Despite this descent into drug use and violence, of the three stars, it was Dana Plato who did most to destroy her wholesome image.
Child star: Dana Plato died in 1999 after overdosing on painkillers and tranquillisers
Troubled trio: Dana Plato, Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as the child stars of Diff'rent Strokes. All 3 are arrested for various crimes.Dana died of OD.
Frail: Gary Coleman is pushed out of Utah County Jail after an overnight stay for an outstanding arrest warrrant
Arrests: Gary Coleman (L) in his police mugshot at the weekend, and Todd Bridges in court in 1993
Trial: Gary Coleman is escorted from Inglewood Court by his bodyguards after testifying at his trial in 1999 after being accused of misdemeanor battery
Court: Dana Plato appears in Las Vegas District Court in 1991 charged with robbing a video store at gunpoint
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