Turns out “Dancing with the Stars” co-host Tom Bergeron isn’t always the Mr. Nice Guy you see on TV!
Bergeron, who is in the process of writing his memoirs, said he will dish on how he keeps his cool in the face of a lot of Hollywood aggravation.
“The subtext is a lot about the years of meditation I’ve done to keep the hot temper – which I hope is never on display on camera – in control,” said Bergeron, a Haverhill homey and the ex-host of WBZ’s “People Are Talking” and the MAGIC 106.7 morning show.
“That was an issue more when I was a younger. Meditation was a real important part of that and helping me stay in the moment, which is so much what doing live television is about.”
Ergo, the title of Tom’s tome is “I’m Hosting As Fast As I Can – Zen and the Art of Staying Sane in Hollywood.”
Bergeron said he wasn’t convinced he had a memoir in him – until an old pal, TV legend Carl Reiner, told him he was really funny!
“My agent wanted me to do it. Lisa Sharkey, an editor at HarperCollins, wanted me to. I thought, ‘Let me just write some pages and see if the humor translates to the pages,’ ” he said.
“So I sent the first 30 pages to Carl Reiner, whom I’ve known since ‘People Are Talking’ – we’ve stayed close and we go to lunch a lot. I just adore the guy.
“I said to him, ‘Please know that there’s no pressure. You don’t have to read this, but if you do, please be honest,’ ” Tom told us.
Two days later, the comic legend wrote back: “All I have to say is, ‘More, more!’ ”
And that’s all Tom needed to fire up the laptop again and cruise down memory lane.
File Under: No Hollywood Square.
The Naked truth
Jamaica Plain photographer Gail Rush’s picture of hardcore punksters the Boston Crew is included in “Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History Of American Hardcore Music.”
The new book and traveling exhibit documents the ’80s hardcore punk-rock scene. Back in 1982, Rush snapped her shot in front of the old Naked i in the Combat Zone and managed to get the picture before a cop told her to move along because people wouldn’t come in or out of the strip club “with a camera at the door.” The exhibit, which opened to raves in NYC, is headed to Boston next month.
