He was genial, personable and a good listener," said Harvey Marcovitch, former consultant paediatrician at Banbury hospital, Oxfordshire.In the mid-1990s Sir Roy was elected president of the Royal College of Paediatrics His standing in the profession was high. He was not regarded as a maverick but as a thoughtful, sensitive physician. But, in the past few years, as the cases in which he was involved have collapsed, his reputation has started to crumble.The case against him rests on his alleged misuse of statistics. The infamous "Meadow's law" that one cot death is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder and his suggestion that the chances of three deaths happening in one family was one in 73 million are now discredited.His supporters dispute that judgement. A professor of paediatrics at a teaching hospital said Sir Roy had never intended "Meadow's law" - which was first cited by a US paediatrician - to be used as a rule of thumb "That is where he has been traduced," he said. On the one in 73 million statistic, friends say it was accurate as applied to a randomly-selected woman who had never had a cot death but inaccurate when one or more cot deaths had already occurred.Friends claim Sir Roy was expecting to be questioned on the figure so that he could elucidate it but the questions never came.

In 2000, he wrote a defence of his evidence in the Sally Clark case after her first appeal failed.Dr Marcovitch said Sir Roy's contribution to child health was undoubted. "There are a large number of children alive today who would not have been but for him." But the Attorney General is now considering reviewing all the cases which could have been affected by Sir Roy's lack of self-doubt.. Bobby Brown, the musician, has been charged with attacking his wife, the singer and actress Whitney Houston, causing her facial injuries. Houston, whose hit songs include "I Will Always Love You", told them Brown had struck her.Houston, 40, "sustained visible injuries to her face, which included a bruise on her left cheek and a cut on her inner upper lip", police said in a written statement.

Brown, 34, an original member of music group New Edition, was not at home when they arrived but turned himself in on Wednesday, accompanied by his wife. He was released after he was given a copy of the charge and is to appear in court next month.Brown, who had hits with "My Prerogative"and "Every Little Step", has a history of run-ins with the law. In August he was jailed in Georgia for violating probation from a 1996 drink-driving conviction. In 2000, he was held in Florida for violating probation after an incident at a nightclub.