Don’t tell Regis he’s retiring

NEW YORK — Regis Philbin wades into the studio audience to chat during a commercial break.

“Thanks, everybody, for coming,” he says sincerely, then, with a dash of comic bluster, cracks: “Anybody want to pay me a tribute?”

“Don’t leave!” a woman cries out from the back row.

She might as well save her breath.

After ruling morning television for 28 years as the co-host who made performance art of TV gab, the 80-year-old Philbin is exiting “Live! With Regis and Kelly.”

His last day is today. There’s no turning back.

Philbin made his announcement on the show in January: “I don’t want to alarm anybody,” he began before dropping the bomb.

This fall, during the long goodbye, “Live!” has been full of valedictories and retrospectives befitting Philbin’s marathon run. His final week has been given over to special guests on the order of David Letterman, Donald Trump, Don Rickles and former co-host Kathie Lee Gifford, as well as Tony Bennett, Josh Groban and Bret Michaels performing.

Today’s finale (9 a.m., KXLY) will be “a moving hourlong tribute to Regis,” according to the show, “with many surprises for Regis and the audience.”

And that will be that. Next week, the show will drop back to temporary solo billing – “Live! With Kelly” – while the search begins for the person who will permanently claim Philbin’s chair.

But with all this transition in the offing, it’s worth keeping two things in mind.

“Everybody says to me, ‘Oh, you’re retiring,’ ” notes Philbin, who then erupts: “I’m NOT retiiiiring! I’m MOVING ON!”

During an interview after a recent morning’s broadcast at his Manhattan studio, Philbin engages in little of his signature Regis-riffing. Looking back and looking ahead, he is reflective, earnest, a bit wistful.

For a while, he explains, “every time a new contract came up, I would say to myself, ‘Maybe it’s time to get out.’ Then I would say, ‘Awww, what am I going to do? I might as well continue.’

“Within the 28-year span there were times when I doubted that what I was doing was the right thing, was interesting, was funny,” he goes on. “You have those doubts. But then it becomes 10 years, then it was 15, 20, 25.”

Now, truly, it seems enough’s enough.

“This time, I said, ‘I really would like to do something else before I quit (the TV business).’ And frankly I’d like to have a little time off. I started in 1955 as (an NBC) page over at 30 Rock, so it’s been a long time.” Meanwhile, he looks forward to easing the pace of his social life.

The host chat segment of “Live!” – the impromptu give-and-take between Philbin and co-host Kelly Ripa“is what made the show,” Philbin notes, and it was often fueled by the respective on-the-town social whirl of Regis and his co-host.

“But I sometimes would have to force myself to go out and see a play or go to a party that I really didn’t care about,” he says, “to have something that I could talk about the next day.” As a kid, Philbin was a talker and a joker with his pals in the Bronx. But beyond that corner of the world, he was painfully shy.

“When it came to getting laughs in front of a microphone or a television camera or on stage, I couldn’t do it,” he recalls, not even as he harbored ill-defined dreams of a show business career. “I had to overcome the lack of confidence, the shyness, the thoughts that I never would be able to do what I saw other people doing on camera or heard on the radio.”

In San Diego, where in the late 1950s he landed a job as a TV reporter, he expanded his duties to include a late-night Saturday talk show. Infused with the example of breezy raconteur Jack Paar, “I got in front of an audience and, man that was it!”

That was in fall 1961. Exactly a half-century ago, Regis became Regis.

Later, he gained national exposure as the announcer and sidekick on comic Joey Bishop’s ABC late-night show. More local TV followed on the West Coast, notably as a co-host of a morning show in Los Angeles.

Then he came home to New York, where he landed a local morning show in 1983. The ratings grew. Two years later, Kathie Lee Johnson joined him as co-host.

In 1988, he and Kathie Lee (by then wed to sportscaster Frank Gifford) went national.

She left the show in 2000. After a tryout period for a replacement, “All My Children” star Ripa won the job as his female foil.

“We’ve had so much fun,” said Ripa. With no need to specify what “it” means, she added, “I don’t want to deal with it until the actual (day). I’m not thinking about it. I don’t want to get emotional.”

After today , the show Philbin built will be left in her custody, as well as executive producer Michael Gelman. It falls to Gelman to navigate a smooth transition to a new host after a few weeks or months of substitutes (such as Jerry Seinfeld next week) and, of course, on-the-air tryouts.

“I don’t want to drag it out for too long,” Gelman said, “but we also want to make the right decision. We want to make sure this isn’t a quickie Vegas wedding that ends in divorce.”

Once he’s out the door, he plans to sample the show.

“If I wake up in time, I’ll take a look,” he promises. “If I don’t, they’re on their own.”