I'm Only One Man!

The popular daytime TV personality recounts his first experiences on television, his family life, his partnership with Kathie Lee Gifford, and his most memorable moments on the set of Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.

The morning talk show Live with Regis and Kathie Lee has been so successful in building a huge base of loyal fans that it requires no crystal ball to predict that Regis's account of the year 1994 in his life will sell very well. With gentle, self-deprecating humor, the performer, assisted by freelancer Zehme, recalls his youth in the Bronx, his education at Notre Dame, his early years on TV in San Diego and Los Angeles, his stint as second banana to comic Joey Bishop and his eventual triumph in New York. He relates many anecdotes about his friends among the famous and the lesser-known and about working with co-star Kathie Lee Gifford and producer Michael Gelman, who serves as his mock whipping boy on camera. And he describes the almost incredibly frantic pace of his daily existence, aptly referring to himself as a "commercial machine." Still, as he notes, after a long climb, his life is "pretty darn good." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The irrepressible talk-show host here gives an account of his whirlwind activities over the course of a year in a diarylike format. Although at times it seems Philbin would have been better served by a more straightforward autobiography, since some of his best anecdotes are sandwiched in between his kvetching about his stomach troubles and his tennis game, there are still some great stories here. He talks about his idols Perry Como and Dean Martin, his ritual dinners with Charles Grodin and Jack Paar, why he walked off The Joey Bishop Show, and the origins of his mock feud with Gelman, his baby-faced producer. He also takes more than a few hilarious, merciless digs at cohost Kathie Lee Gifford. Walter Winchell once described Philbin as "show biz from head to toenails," and is he ever--brimming with sentiment and painfully sincere, he's also a hardworking trouper and a shameless name-dropper (it seems he's kept every friend he's ever made and mentions each and every one of them here). But hey, if Kathie Lee can make the best-seller list (I Can't Believe I Said That! [1992]), it'll be a cinch for Reege. Joanne Wilkinson