Regis!: The Unauthorized Biography

The first biography of the beloved gameshow host and media personality.

He was the host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Live! With Regis. Regis Philbin is short, curmudgeonly, and pure schmaltz. Yet he commands so much celebrity attention that he launched his own award-winning fashion line.

The dapper Reege hosted Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when it was the most popular game show in television history. He cultivated and was admired by an incredibly diverse fan base while on Live! With Regis and later on when the show became Live! With Regis and Kelly: old-timers love his cantankerous outlook on life; middle-aged men wanted to be him and middle-aged women wanted to marry him; younger viewers love his hip-to-be-square attitude. Go, Reege, go!

This biography goes through Philbin’s personal and professional life up to the early 2000s, and how he grew to be such a huge media sensation. During his slow rise through the television ranks, he got little respect and recognition for his talk show innovations. Even his name was the fodder of jokes. It was his on-air chemistry with Kathie Lee Gifford on their morning show Live! that catapulted them both to mega-stardom.

Scandal, of course, played a huge part in this. Viewers developed a love-to-loathe-her relationship with the screechy Gifford, especially after her sweatshop imbroglio and the revelation of her husband’s embarrassing affair with a stewardess. And there was Philbin’s own tawdry affair with a much younger bunny who, ahem, he never had intercourse with...but they did do everything else. Oh, Reege! Regis! The Unauthorized Biography looks at all of this in detail, including Philbin’s bittersweet relationships with his physically challenged son, Danny, and his daughter, Amy, as she struggled with drug addiction. Finally, Tracy recounts the improbable events that led to his becoming the beloved host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?