Being Bonaduce is back on track. So is its titular star.
Partridge Family survivor Danny Bonaduce has pronounced himself sober after finishing a month-long stint in rehab.
The red-headed funnyman returned to his day job Monday on Southern California radio powerhouse Star 98.7, where he cohosts a morning radio show.
Additionally, production on his upcoming VH1 reality series, Being Bonaduce, will ramp up after being backburnered in early May to allow its 45-year-old subject to dry out.
"Danny Bonaduce will be entering a 30-day alcohol treatment program, at which point production will slow down so that Danny and his family can work through their issues," the network said in a statement at the time.
However, it looks like production continued at a nice clip throughout Bonaduce's rehab stay: The yakker took a ribbing Monday morning from his radio show cohost Jamie White and several callers for his revelation that he let a VH1 camera crew into the facility during his brief visitation hours with his children.
The sobriety-challenged Bonaduce defended his actions by saying that's who he really is.
Indeed, the Philadelphia-born entertainer has had a long history with alcohol and drug abuse, which he says began during his days as the Partridge Family's resident wise-cracking bassist. His sordid saga includes: a 1991 arrest for allegedly slugging a Phoenix transvestite--which he blames on his hard-partying ways (he wound up serving 750 hours of community service); multiple arrests for cocaine possession; and several trips to treatment centers only to relapse (in 2001, for instance, he served two separate 30-day stints in rehab).
On a 1998 interview with Geraldo Rivera, Bonaduce admitted to his struggles. "I was on your show [earlier], talking about being stone-cold sober and lying to you. I mean, I--I really--I--I admire you very much, but lying to you didn't bother me. I was lying to my mother; I was lying to my friends. I--you lie, you steal; you're a drug addict. That's the game. But it was so embarrassing; the day the show ran, while I was saying how clean I was, I was actually simultaneously being arrested in Florida for scoring cocaine on the street."
While Bonaduce has never gone to jail for his drug use ("I should have, but I had very good lawyers," the father of two joked in a 2002 Boston Globe interview), he offered fans a serious look into his demons in his 2001 book, Random Acts of Badness: My Story.
Although VH1 has yet to set a debut date for Being Bonaduce, fans can relive his more innocent years in the just-released DVD of The Partridge Family: The Complete First Season.