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Now the rest of the story. San Francisco television viewers know all about multi talented athlete Mutley Alba. His program airs Sundays at 5:30 on Channel 5. Alba and his friend Doug McConnell co host the show, which in a medium of spin off look alikes, is refreshingly unique. It's an unusual video collage of nature and travel and Sports. Alba and McConnell roam the world by land and sea, on motorcycle, on foot, on skis, searching out adventure and always finding it. There is no question, no quarreling, about the fact that Alba is the star. McConnell is sort of a sidekick. I think producers came to that decision because of Alba's extraordinary athletic prowess. He is a remarkable skier, also an uncommonly capable scuba diver, and his strong appeal to women viewers was surely another consideration. Station promotion material. The celebrity biographies they send out always include Alba's vital statistics. His height, his weight, his clothing sizes, his license plate, his favorite movies, even his zodiac sun sign Scorpio male. The bios say that's only half correct for the San Francisco athlete who has the girls cooing and sighing from one end of the bay to the other, is not a man at all. Not a man at all. He is a she. And that brings us to the rest of the story. The charade began when Alba got into television. It started innocently enough when somebody noticed that her usual but real first name, Mutley, sounded much more manly than womanly. So she has been masquerading as a he ever since. And not even her most ardent admirers have known about this. You and I are learning it for the first time right here and right Now, Alba and McConnell are merely co stars. Friends. Alba has been involved with an adventurous freelance photographer named Gene since December of 1979. And since then, Gene has been more than just the man in Alba's life. He has been sort of a thrill seeking Pied piper who lured her from the tedium of every day toward horizons of which she could never otherwise have dreamed. In 1981, for example, Gene was a ski patrolman in Mammoth Lakes, California. It was his job to run the slopes each morning and again each evening. But he could not bear to spend all of that time apart from Alba. So he taught her to ski so that she could accompany him. Friends who remember Alba from way back could never have imagined her in scuba gear. And yet she, in order to share in all of Jean's adventures, learned scuba diving. They say Alba would like to learn water skiing and polo next, that those sports would make interesting episodes for her television show and yet learn what could be more fascinating than Motley Alba herself. Here's a female athlete who became interested in sports, eventually famous because she loved a man. Gene Alba. The fellow who found Motley in a dog. The fellow who found Mutley in a dog pound when she was only seven weeks old. Mutley as a mutt? That's right. Part terrier, part cocker. A skiing, scuba diving dog. A skiing, scuba diving dog. And now you know the rest of the story.
