The Man, The Brand, The Plan To Rule TV

Uh-oh. If you were Larry, would you take a sip from any glass that Ryan Seacrest handed you? But Seacrest says he and the aging, ailing Dick Clark are just as chummy: "When I do the Emmys, I always call Dick to talk about it," Seacrest says, and of course he and Clark have become a wholesome twosome hosting New Year's Eve from Times Square; the clock ticks away the hours until Seacrest handles the gig all by himself.

You'd be amiss if, based upon his omnipresence on the tube, you dismissed Ryan Seacrest as a ham, a camera hog, someone whose career path might seem to be leading straight toward acting, whether in TV or film. "No chance!" he shouts at that suggestion. "No chance! Performing is something that got me in the door. Building the company, acquiring assets, producing programs, creating them -- that is the most interesting stuff to me right now. I don't think a lot of people realize that about me. I front a lot of different programs; I front the E! News show because we have a production deal with that network and are producing shows for them and will share the ownership in those shows."

What a starry-eyed romantic!

He does have a sense of showmanship under all that palaver about profits and tie-ins and ratings, however. He confesses to having been too "robotic" when he started out as "Idol" host (actually co-host, with a partner since jettisoned from the show). "I did something in the second year that helped a lot," he says. "I took the IFB out of my ear." The IFB is a tiny earphone that pipes control-room chatter and guidance from the producer into his head. "I took it out so the control room could not speak to me during the show, at least when we were live, and that helped a lot.

"Then you're in the middle of it all, you can hear it all, and you can make decisions like a quarterback. If you want to go back to Paula, you go back to Paula. You're just constantly trying to stir the pot and make moments during that show so it's not always the same old thing."

Of course the pot that gets stirred the most, and results in the snottiest or sparkliest moments, is the one from which judge Simon Cowell gets his wisecracks and insults, the ones aimed at Seacrest as well as at the aspiring performers. "Those moments are pretty real," Seacrest says.

"Simon and I are very much alike -- very, very competitive, competing to get the last word in, and that's pretty genuine," Seacrest says. "However, after the show, we don't take anything with us; we can go and have a pizza and laugh about it. So we don't take anything personally. We have pretty thick skins. And I think our relationship, because we're so comfortable with each other, allows us to go there."

Frequently, Cowell's insults to Seacrest include sexual innuendo. "I just think he's got his well of clever statements, and that's probably the only well he can dip into right now," Seacrest says. Cowell sometimes intimates, with a smarmy grin, that Seacrest is sexually attracted to him. "You have to understand," Seacrest says. "Everything in Simon's life revolves around him, and he thinks everybody -- anybody, a plant, a tree, a woman, a man -- everybody wants to have an intimate relationship with Simon, because he is Simon. That's how his mind works."

It is suggested that with all his dough -- Cowell makes $42 million a year, Forbes magazine estimates, from "Idol" and other sources -- Cowell could afford to wear something classier than an undershirt and crummy old jeans. "He's a creature of habit," Seacrest says. "He eats the same food every day, he wears the same clothes every day, he spends his money on cars. I don't know that he's necessarily a fashionista, no. That box-cut haircut from 1982 has been out for quite a while now."

For all the gibes and jabs, Seacrest does have things in common with Cowell. Seacrest likes cars, too; he has a supercool Aston Martin ("the James Bond car," he notes); and he seems to thrive on, rather than resent, jokes about his sexual ambiguity. During the Super Bowl pregame show, one of the three color commentators described Seacrest (who hosted a vapid "red carpet" show as part of the festivities) as "one of those metrosexuals." Craig Ferguson, host of CBS's "Late Late Show," recently included in his monologue a joke about Seacrest that went like this: "Ryan admitted that he cried at Eva Longoria Parker's wedding," Ferguson said with a lubricious leer. "Hang in there, Ryan. Someday you'll find someone just like Tony."

"Tony" is Tony Parker, guard for the San Antonio Spurs. Get it? Seacrest insists he's not irritated by this kind of thing.

As the celebrity guest on "Larry King Live," Seacrest was asked about rumors that he's gay. "Doesn't bother me," he said. "I mean, whether it be that I'm 5-foot-9 and people call me 'short' or, 'Hey, I don't like the color of your eyes.' "