Bill Cosby, the American comedian who has been accused of rape and sexual assault by more than 20 women, is to make his first live performance since November on Wednesday despite the threat of public protests and a number of outstanding legal actions against him.
The 77-year-old comic is due to appear in Kitchener, Ontario this evening, despite promises by activists to demonstrate outside the theatre and buy up tickets so that audience members could boo and turn their backs on Cosby.
The performance comes a day after two more women added their names to a defamation action accusing Cosby and his representatives branding them as liars when they came forward with claims of rape and sexual assault against Cosby late last year.
Therese Serignese, 57, who claimed that Mr Cosby raped her in 1976 when she was 19 and Linda Traitz, 63, who claimed Cosby tried to get her to take drugs on a trip to the beach in California the 1970s, joined the defamation action that was originally filed by another accuser, Tamara Green, last December.
Joseph Cammarata, a lawyer for the women, told People Magazine that the women were seeking redress for "harm caused to them by statements made by Mr Cosby through his lawyer and spokespeople."
Cosby's publicist David Brokaw and his lawyer Martin Singer did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. Singer has already said he expects to prevail in the original lawsuit.
Cosby, who starred as the avuncular Dr Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992, has never been charged in connection with any of the sex assault allegations, and through his representatives he has denied them.
However the allegations have sent his 50-year career into a tailspin, with one television network cancelling a new show that was in development with Cosby and another deciding not to show re-runs of The Cosby Show.
