It is a classic story of the American dream made real: an impoverished Kenyan goatherder rising to become a brilliant Harvard-educated economist. On the way he fights racial prejudice at home and corruption at work, survives the heartbreak of a broken relationship and, despite it all, leads the fight to rid Africa of its colonial legacy.

This extraordinary story is told by US presidential hopeful Barack Obama as he recalls the life of the man who inspired him - his father.

Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, is flying off the shelves, exciting and astonishing readers. It is a bestseller, and no wonder - because the story just gets better and better.

Obama is already Democratic senator for Illinois. Now he is in the running to be the first black president in the country's history.

"My story is part of the larger American story," he declared in the electrifying speech that won him his Senate seat just two years ago. "In no other country on Earth is my story even possible."

Many believe Obama is a serious threat to Hillary Clinton's hopes of becoming the Democrats' choice for their next presidential candidate - and his lovingly written account of the debt he owes his father, also called Barack Obama, will do him no harm.

Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all of Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth. We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses.

And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Obama's own relatives and family friends.

Charismatic and with movie-star looks, Barack Obama Jnr has managed to steal some of Hillary Clinton's most influential supporters in the three weeks since he entered the US presidential race.

The 45-year-old lawyer depicts himself as a fresh voice for voters tired of the divisive rhetoric and self-serving ambition of established politicians on each side of the Democrat-Republican divide.

His campaign to become the first black president is inspired, he says, by his love of the country that allowed his father to triumph against odds.

Barrack Obama Snr started life with the advantage of being able to read and write, but he also felt a profound sense of injustice. His father was a cook for British settlers in Kenya, who demeaningly called him their "boy".

Grandfather Obama sent his son to a missionary school, but after completing his education, the youth could find little work except goatherding in his remote village of Nyangoma Kogela, in the roadless hills of Western Kenya.

At 18 he married a girl called Kezia. But Obama Snr was more interested in politics and economics than his family, and his political leanings had been brought to the notice of leaders of the Kenyan independence movement.

He was put forward for an American-sponsored scholarship in economics, with the idea being that he would eventually use his Western-honed skills in the new Kenya. At the age of 23 he headed for university in Hawaii, leaving behind the pregnant Kezia and their baby son.

Relatives say he was already a slick womaniser and, once in Honolulu, he promptly persuaded a student called Ann - a naive 18-year-old white girl - to marry him. Barack Jnr was born in 1961.

Two years later, Obama Snr was on the move again. He was accepted at Harvard, and left his little boy and wife behind.

Obama Jnr claims that racism on both sides of the family destroyed the marriage between his mother and father. In his book, he says Ann's mother did not want a black son-in-law, and Obama Snr's father "didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white women".

In fact Ann divorced her husband after she discovered his bigamous double life. She remarried and moved to Indonesia with young Barack and her new husband, an oil company manager.

Obama Snr was forced to return to Kenya, where he fathered two more children by Kezia. He was eventually hired as a top civil servant - and married yet again.

Now prosperous with a flashy car and good salary, his third wife was an American-born teacher called Ruth, whom he had met at Harvard while still legally married to both Kezia and Ann, and who followed him to Africa.

It is alleged that Ruth finally divorced him after he repeatedly flew into whisky-fuelled rages, beating her brutally. He lost both his legs while driving under the influence and also lost his job.

However, this was no bar to his womanising: he sired a son, his eight child, by yet another woman and continued to come home drunk. He was about to marry her when he died in yet another drunken crash when Obama was 21.

Obama's 40-year-old cousin Said Hussein Obama told The Mail on Sunday: "Clearly Barack has been very deeply affected by what he has learnt about his father, who was my father's older brother.

"You have to remember that his father was an African, and in Africa, polygamy is part of life.

"We have assured Barack that his father was a loving person but at times it must be difficult for him to reconcile this with his father's drinking and simultaneous marriages."

Far from being an inspiration, the father whom Obama was coming to know seemed like a total stranger. In his book, he attempts to put the best face on it. His father, he writes, lost his civil service job after campaigning against corrupt African politicians who had "taken the place of the white colonials".

One of Obama Snr's former drinking partners, Kenyan writer Philip Ochieng Ochieng says, however, his friend's downfall was his weak character.

"Although charming, generous and extraordinarily clever, Obama Snr was also imperious, cruel and given to boasting about his brain and wealth.

"He was excessively fond of Scotch. He had fallen into the habit of going home drunk every night. His boasting proved his undoing and left him without a job, plunged him into prolonged poverty and dangerously wounded his ego."

In fact he was a menace to life, said Ochieng. "He was just like Mr Toad (from The Wind in the Willows), very arrogant on the road, especially when he had whisky inside. I was not surprised when I learnt how he died."

Ruth refused to comment on the abuse charges when we tracked her down to the Kenyan school where she now works.

She said: "Barack's father was a very difficult man. Although I was married to him the longest of any of his wives, he wasn't an easy person to be around."

Obama has acknowledged that his father grappled with a drinking problem. But with a gift for words, he has turned it into another component of the myth.

Drink, he says, like drugs, are one of "the traps that seem laid in a black man's soul".

Obama claims that he, too, has been racially abused.

His mother sent him back to Hawaii, where he was admitted to a prep school, Punahau Academy, and lived with his maternal grandparents.

And while there, says Obama, he was tortured by fellow pupils - who let out monkey hoots - and turned into a disenchanted teenage rebel, experimenting with cocaine and marijuana.

Obama says his soaring dream of a better America grew out of his hurt and pain.

Friends, however, remember his school days differently. He was a spoilt high-achiever, they recall.

One of his former classmates, Alan Lum, said: "Hawaii is such a melting pot that it didn't occur to me when we were growing up that he might have problems about being one of the few African-Americans at the school. Us kids didn't see colour. He was easy-going and well liked."

Obama was later admitted to read politics and international relations at New York's prestigious Columbia University, where, his book claims, "no matter how many times the administration tried to paint them over, the walls remained scratched with blunt correspondence about niggers."

But one of his classmates, Joe Zwicker (45) - now a lawyer in Boston - said: "That surprises me. Columbia was a pretty tolerant place. There were African American students in my classes and I never saw any evidence of racism at all."

Family members and acquaintances believe that the real cloud over Obama's life has been the discovery that his father was far from the romantic figure that his mother tried to portray.

A family friend said: "He is haunted by his father's failures. He grew up thinking of his father as a brilliant intellectual and pioneer of African independence, only to learn that, in Western terms, he was basically a drunken lecher."

This ugly truth, say friends, has made Obama ruthlessly determined to use every weapon to succeed, including the glossily edited version of his father's story. "At the end of the day Barack wants the story to help his political cause, so perhaps he couldn't afford to be too honest," said Ochieng. - The Mail on Sunday

Seated on plastic chairs surrounded by chickens and barefoot children, Barack Obama's Kenyan relatives listened to the radio for news of how their favorite son was doing in the New Hampshire primary earlier this month.

Kogelo, the western Kenyan village of Barack Obama's father, has been spared the political and ethnic violence that has erupted in Kenya after the elections. But that, as well as his nephew's political success, were on Said Obama's mind.

If Barack Obama were in Kenya today, he would "work with the leadership to bring them to a roundtable and find a solution to the problems that have been ravaging the country," his uncle said.

In fact, Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs confirmed the senator spoke to opposition leader Raila Odinga for about five minutes Monday before going into a rally in New Hampshire. Gibbs said Odinga, a Luo, and Obama's father, who is deceased but was also named Barack, are from the same tribe.

Obama urged that "all the leaders there, regardless of their position on the election tell their supporters to stand down, to desist with the violence and resolve in a peaceful way in accordance with Kenyan law."

-- Associated Press

Byline: Eric Krol Daily Herald Political Writer

-Snip

Obama said Keyes' assessment is wrong and part of his opponent's continued "extreme rhetoric."

The nation is unified in its belief bin Laden needs to be hunted down, Obama said.

-Snip