Sad news for people who like watching confused old people on TV: Regis Philbin will retire from broadcasting later this year. Philbin, 79, will leave “Live with Regis and Kelly” after hosting the show for 28 years.
“I don’t want to alarm anybody … but this will be my last year on the show,” he said. “There is a time that everything must come to an end for certain people on camera, especially certain old people.” Philbin said his last show could be toward the end of the summer or into the fall, but nothing has been decided. [EW]
Man… first Larry King, now Regis. Our daily dose of televised old cranks is almost gone. All we have now is the weekly installment of Andy Rooney decrying how fast everything moves (“In my day, people enjoyed strolling!”). I’m sure glad I’m going to be young and handsome forever.
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It’s fairly obvious that we can expect “Live with Lobster Dog and Kelly” at some point next year. And it will be awesome.
Mark consuelos just sent a fruit basket to ABC with his resume stapled to it.
To get Andy Rooney to retire, you will have to pry his segment from his cold, dead eyebrows.
Barbara Walters is still good for a laugh. Confused old people are probably a growth industry anyways.
Next you’ll tell me Alex Trebek is leaving Jeopardy! (coming soon)
….and by “fruit basket”, I mean “large bag of cocaine”.
The timing of this is no coincidence. Regis must’ve seen Dick Clark shambling his way through New Years Eve and thought “fuck no.”
Regis actually quit because the higher-ups wouldn’t honor the “Free Dr. Prometheus Cuttlebee’s All-Purpose Wellness Tonic” clause in his contract. They tried to explain that it hadn’t been made in nearly seventy years, but Reg simply shook his fist at them and walked away muttering about “Dropsy.”
I’m rather late here but this does allow me to quote arguably the greatest paragraph in Wikipedia history. It’s, coincidentally, no longer in his profile, leading me to believe it’s TOO true.
Philbin was a celebrity guest at WrestleMania VII in Los Angeles in 1991, commentating on the main event between Hulk Hogan and Sgt. Slaughter. He was later reported to have been asked to leave the set of the show after being caught doing cocaine with Ric Flair and Macho Man Randy Savage.