I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests' books.
When I do entertain, in the summer, which is rare, I receive my guests on the front porch, set up wicker trays found at Pottery Barn, and serve iced beverages. Anytime I do welcome friends, it's always a tray of canapes or Planters peanuts, jellied candy from Paris, and a good bottle of Sancerre.
I don't rehearse on either of my shows, 'Family Feud' or my talk show. I never rehearse with the guests. I don't want to have any preconceived thoughts, notions, because that kills my creativity as a host and as a stand up.
Japanese naval officers in dress whites are frequent guests at Pearl Harbor's officers' mess and are very polite. They always were. Except, of course, for that little interval there between 1941 and 1945.
It only looks like I get to eat a lot of food on TV. I really just get the one bite and the crew and guests eat everything else.
My table seats eight, so that's my maximum. Having a small number of guests is the only way to generate good conversation. Besides, your whole house doesn't get wrecked that way.
You get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules.
I mean, I can cook, but I'd get very nervous having my food being judged by dinner guests.
A cocktail done right can really show your guests that you care.
When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents' boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing 'Amazing Stories,' with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.