As the Oct 7 California recall election heats up, actor-turned-politico Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is now campaigning to unseat California governor Gray Davis, is being forced to face up to more embarrassing revelations from his past.

In an interview with an adult magazine 26 years ago, the Austrian-born champion bodybuilder who was then based in the anything-goes beach community of Venice, California, spoke at length about his training routines and sexual exploits.

Schwarzenegger, who is currently leading the list of Republican candidates competing to replace Gov. Davis, had admitted to smoking marijuana and engaging in group sex in a 1977 5-page interview titled, "Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Sex Secrets of Bodybuilders," in a now defunct adult magazine.

The bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-politician on Wednesday - for the first time - made known his position on a number of issues including gay marriage, abortion and marijuana use on a syndicated radio show with Sean Hannity, which was also broadcast live on Fox Television.

On gay marriage, he said that he opposes gay marriage but supports domestic partnership rights. He added that marriage should be between a man and a woman. He also told radio listeners that he is in favour of legalising marijuana for medicinal purposes and protecting a woman's right to abortion, but not late term abortions.

Speaking to Oui magazine, which was owned and published by Playboy, Schwarzenegger said that "everybody jumped on" the woman involved in what amounted to an orgy and "took her upstairs where we all got together". When asked by the interviewer asked if he was talking about a "gang bang", he answered: "Yes."

At the time of the story, Schwarzenegger, who was then 29 and single, added that not every muscleman participated in the gang bang, "just the guys who can fuck in front of other guys. Not everybody can do that. Some think that they don't have a big-enough cock, so they can't get a hard-on," reported thesmokinggun.com.

In the interview, he also rejected the practice of abstaining from sex prior to a competition, he said: "I get laid on purpose. I can't sleep before a competition and I'm up all night, anyway, so instead of staring at the ceiling I figure I might as well find somebody and fuck."

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He also revealed that a number of competitors including himself at the 1972 Mr. Olympia contest received oral sex backstage. "We had girls backstage giving head, then all of us went out and I won. It didn't bother me at all; in fact, I went out there feeling like 'King Kong.'"

When asked whether he was "freaked out" by being in such close contact with guys at the gym, his reply, which is likely to win brownie points from gay and lesbian voters in California, went: ""Not at all. When I was playing soccer at the age of 14, the first thing we'd do before going out onto the field would be to climb up on one another's thighs and massage the legs; it was a regular thing. None of us had a thought of being gay, absolutely not, and it's the same with bodybuilders.

"Men shouldn't feel like fags just because they want to have nice-looking bodies. Another thing: Recently I posed for a gay magazine, which caused much comment. But it doesn't bother me. Gay people are fighting the same kind of stereotyping that bodybuilders are: People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do about us. Well, I have absolutely no hang-ups about the fag business; though it may bother some bodybuilders, it doesn't affect me at all."

The 56-year-old who has four children and married for 17 years to Maria Shriver, a member of the Kennedy clan, told a Sacramento radio station host that the interview was from another chapter in his life and had things other than politics on his mind all those years ago. Shriver is the niece of slain President John F. Kennedy and the daughter of Sargent Shriver, the first head of the US Peace Corps.

"I never lived my life to be a politician. I never lived my life to be the governor of California. Obviously, I've made statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that's the way I always was. I was always that way, because otherwise I wouldn't have done the things that I did in my career, including the body building and the show business and all those things."