Don Rickles. What can you say? 60 years in show biz. 82 years old and still runs rings around stand-ups pumping Red Bulls at the Improv. Okay, maybe he moves a little slower, but with aim as deadly as his, who cares?

You’d think that sixty years later, with a million-gag repertoire in that huge hairless skull, Rickles would be coasting. But he worked this show! He insulted the band, the audience, Jimmy – anyone in range. And they loved it. Were some of the jokes creaky? You bet. But if you don’t like this one, there’ll be another along any second. Ba-rum-bum!!

Rickles’ political incorrectness is his stock in trade and still occasionally seems shocking in these sensitive times. Mr. Warmth, however, can get away with anything. When Jimmy noted that JK Live was approaching its 1000th episode, Rickles reflected on the show: “Once in a while when I take a shot at the wife, I use it for a nightlight.” There were other jokes The Guest Whisperer won’t even repeat!

Since Kimmel is in the middle of his concert stunt run, the audience is mostly young enough to get carded. However, when Rickles trotted out an old gag from the ‘60s – “Look at this kid – Halloween’s over!” – both the 19-year-old target and the rest of the audience were falling over. He did get sincere for a second, thanking Jimmy for hosting the Television Academy event featuring his new DVD (“Mr. Warmth – The Don Rickles Project”).

All in all when it comes to talk show appearances, the man is a class act in a class by himself.

Okay, all the tips and guidelines and inside secrets we’ve been espousing here at The Guest Whisperer – you can just throw them out. The rulebook for being a smash hit as a talk show guest has just been rewritten and it goes like this:

1. Be the hottest new three-brother boy band on the scene, or at least be at the top of Disney/ABC/Hollywood Records teen-celeb hit machine.

2. Pack the audience with tons of tween and teen fans jacked up on female hormones, thereby……sending your host’s youth demographic through the roof.

3. Be excruciatingly cute, yet apparently unaffected by fame.

4. Let that straightman host have some fun and be your guide through the screaming twists and turns of female fandom, because hey you have no fear of the competition on that stage – those adoring eyes, and pounding pulses are there to see YOU, right?

5. Secure that you’ve locked your target demo down tight, proceed to expand your crossover appeal with bite-sized multi-generational stories like your visit to the White House Easter Egg Hunt (“The President looked at my feet and said ‘I like them shoes, Joe – I gotta get me a pair.’”) and how Barry Gibb of the BeeGees is giving you career advice because his daughter is a gonzo fan.

6. Top it off by letting Jimmy play ringmaster to a wicked exclusive concert that has the audience screaming the audio meter off the hook and then throw in an encore that plays straight through the credits.

Come to think of it – these ARE the rules we’ve been touting: play to your strengths, connect with your host, keep your stories clever and funny and short, and let the audience feel they’re seeing something extra they wouldn’t get at your concert, in your movie, or on your TV show.

Now, if you could just get yourself a boy band, you’d be set!

Roseanne Barr has had her ups and downs. She’s been in and out, and rarely wanders far from controversy. Through it all, she has been a remarkably reliable talk show guest and interview subject, as demonstrated by her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. While Roseanne plugged her ongoing show at the Sahara in Las Vegas, it’s impossible to confine her to a single subject – or even a mere half dozen. She took flight on parenting, joke writing, psychic abilities, politics and her unreasonable fear of Siegfried and Roy.

Simultaneously a celebrity and an ordinary Joe (or Jane), when she relates how she went gaga at seeing Wayne Newton’s mansion, she is the star-struck fan in us all. Yet with her explanation of why she loves Obama, but supports Hillary – “Ho’s before bro’s” is her philosophy – she is dancing on the edge of talk show boundaries.

She can talk about mundane things, that from other guests would have us fidgeting in our seats, because with Roseanne, we know something outrageous is just around the corner. You sense both 50-something housewives and college students respond when she said she gets revenge on her daughters by giving bad advice to her grandchildren. (“Go ahead, poop in your pants. You’re only five!”) She pulled the audience in by giving them sly looks that say “You know what I mean” – looks that slip right by Jimmy. Even so, both she and Jimmy were wonderfully generous in their set-ups for each other: equal opportunity quipsters. The final result was a show segment that was endlessly funny and consistently genuine. (Hey, does anyone else notice that if you close your eyes when Roseanne is talking, you could swear Barbara Walters is in the room?!

Sometimes talk show appearances are bad on-camera lab experiments.  All the elements are in place, but the chemistry fails.  The charming and unaffected Kate Bosworth popped in on Letterman to plug her new flick 21, but somehow the vast bulk of her segment centered around another movie altogether.  (A publicist’s worst nightmare.)  She and Dave swapped gags about skydiving, followed by a clip of her first parachute venture, while in New Zealand, where she just shot The Laundry Warrior by a Korean director.  She then wandered through a story about wandering through NZ with her boyfriend.  The movie she was on the show to promote barely got a mention before she vanished into the commercial break.

How much of this lay on Kate’s shoulder is hard to tell.  She showed up lovely and lively, looking trimly gorgeous (fortunately still above her alarming waif weight of 2006.)  She made all the right moves, having fun with both Dave and Paul Shaffer and relating to both like old pals.  Yet the whole act felt stage managed, undercutting her natural appeal.  Even Dave seemed working from a shoehorned script, as though Kate’s handlers and the show’s producers had concluded the Las Vegas-based movie 21 couldn’t carry the segment.  She wove a brief story about being stranded in Vegas for six weeks, while co-star Kevin Spacey had fun across the state.  Surely after working with Spacey in three movies, there were more stories connected to the movie she was there to support.  But perhaps none she could tell.

It was far from terrible, yet less than anticipated.  We had terrific professionals out front, which is why The Guest Whisperer suspects the fumbles came from backstage.

Thandie Newton is tiny. You may not think so, when she’s paired with vertically challenged leading men like Tom Cruise, but she is a mere slip of a thing, which became apparent when she walked onto the set of The Late Late Show. Yet diminutive as she is, she was almost big enough to stand up to the comic onslaught that is Craig Ferguson. You have to throw out some of the usual talk show rules when dealing with Craig, whose inventive mind and natural-amphetamine bloodstream keep quips flying at supersonic speeds. Perhaps that’s why the producers chose to show her clip from Run Fatboy Run before Thandie came out: any clip would have fallen flat had it been shown after the whirlwind Craig put Newton through.

Considering what she was up against, Thandie played this situation beautifully. Rather than coming on as a performer, she showed up as the witty and accommodating guest – sophisticated, but unafraid of dropping the occasional rude bomb about plastic surgery. Although she was hardly shy and certainly vocal, she wisely refused to play competitively with Craig. Instead she raised the game of reacting to an art form, amplifying the impact of her host’s humor and winning the admiration of the audience at the same time. She treated Craig like one would handle a rambunctious and outrageous friend, both calling him on his naughtiness and surrendering to the fun of it. When he launched a running gag on Tom Cruise’s height, she gently slapped him down while still going with the laughs. A splendid balancing act that demonstrated some of the ruling principles of guest-dom: research your host well, but remain flexible so you can steer with the prevailing winds. Remember that there is more than one way to make a good impression.

Wearing an extremely unflattering dress that looked more like a potato sack cinched and tied tightly under the bust line, Parker Posey appeared ill-at-ease with Craig Ferguson, often looking off to the side and down, away from the host. Even her body language was deadly as she sat turned so far towards Ferguson, that her profile was all that was visible to the audience and camera. That combined with the hair in her eyes, made it difficult for viewers to make any sort of a connection.

Booked to promote her series The Return of Jezebel James, (which was just pulled from the Fox Friday schedule) Posey hardly mentioned the show and instead discussed her allergies, moving, and went off on a tangent about breaking her finger on stage, and taking Vicodin while watching Six Feet Under, that featured her series co-star Lauren Ambrose. Quite a twisted mess, and not a particularly entertaining one.

Posey seemed to have trouble with Ferguson’s accent at times, and seemed to ignore him altogether in order to continue her point, when there was one. Whatever rapport existed in the past between the two of them, as she has been a frequent guest on The Late Late Show, was sadly missing this night.

From her sly humor on Comedy Central Celebrity Roasts to her humbling takes on her own image, Pamela Anderson’s wit and intelligence are reason enough to anticipate her popping up on any talk show. So this makes it all the more surprising that she fell flat on a recent Ellen DeGeneres appearance. I’m sure as you read this, you’re coming up with better repartee than Pam managed. (“Pam Anderson falling flat? Doesn’t that violate the laws of physics?!”) In her defense, she was tired and mildly injured from a tour with magician Hans Klok, but the conversation between her and Ellen was just sporadically entertaining — mostly when Ellen herself was doing the flirting and fawning — and often confusing.

While it was intriguing to hear about Pam’s normal life as a mother (and school traffic monitor!), her low energy and bland presentation made the insights a snooze. And Ellen chatting with her like an old friend was little help, since inside talk without careful clues leaves the viewer out in the cold. To her credit, Pam got in a good line when pitching her new film “Superhero Movie” (“I loved being invisible. My wig did most of the work.”) Yet the majority of even good lines were thrown away or stepped on.

It didn’t help that Pam was positioned between Matt Grant, an engaging Brit who is the current star of The Bachelor, and Margaret Cho, both of whom demonstrated charm and perfect timing. Her 2 Whisper rating highlights some cardinal rules for talk show appearances: get plenty of rest and have your people communicate the essential ammunition the show’s producers need to make you look good, you can’t leave a great appearance to chance!

Ray Romano is so Ray Romano. Self-deprecating, slightly uncomfortable and but always funny. When Craig said he looked good, Romano said that if looking good meant being unemployed and depressed, then that’s him.
He joked about doing non-gay Pilates with a male friend and knowing he needs to get back to work because he recently found himself crying while watching “Deal or No Deal.”

Ostensibly booked on the show to talk about the small release of his latest film “The Grand,” the conversation quickly migrated to a subject, and obvious better talk show fodder, the Internet. He talked about not liking the web much because he always finds something about himself he doesn’t like…such as “Ray Romano sucks.” His well-honed physical comedy timing was evident as he used his water glass to punctuate several humorous moments while talking about a visit to a website, the name of which he almost couldn’t say on air. After warning Craig and the audience that he was going to say a bad word, he said it, got embarrassed, covered his mouth and then drank some more water. He went on to explain that the site compares three celebrities and lets people decide if they want to #@$% them, marry them or kill them. It turns out that six out of ten people want to kill him. He deftly wrapped the bit up by finding the positive side of coming in second, as he saw it, saying “if you’re not going to #@$% me, then just kill me.”

Ray Romano was a good talk show guest. He kept Craig Ferguson on his toes and he kept the audience laughing throughout.

It’s almost as difficult for a star to shine flawlessly on The Colbert Report as it is for one to fall flat.  Stephen Colbert’s skewed and wacky take on conservative talk shows requires a fine balance of earnestness and buffoonery, and while Stephen always manages to carry guests along with him on his harrumphing hayride, the ones that try to match him quip for quip are often left hanging out with a deer-in-the-headlights grin on their faces.

So it came as a delightful surprise that folk-pop icon Carole King’s recent appearance found her holding her own and more in the satiric give and take.  Her liberal politics were ripe fodder for Stephen’s thrusts, and rather than reacting defensively, King gave him some ripe setups (always a sure-fire ticket for a repeat appearance – hosts love a guest who plays to their strengths) and still managed to get in her own zingers.  (She had obviously done her homework, evidenced by her lobbing a line about his obsession with bears.)

In fact, all that keeps her guest slot from getting a full 5 Whispers is that she may have seduced Stephen too well.  When he asked King the reason for the current re-release of her classic “Tapestry” album, she responded, “Sony decided it was time to put out yet another package!”  Her candor so disarmed him that it may have kept him from venturing fully into the outrageous liberal-baiting realms his audience so loves.

That King had charmed the puckish Mr. Colbert was apparent when after the break, he introduced her performance of “I Feel the Earth Move” with a simple, heartfelt “Ladies and gentlemen – Carole King.”  And while her voice was showing a bit of age, she easily reminded us why she is a singer-songwriting legend still turning out anticipated albums.

If ever you wanted a case study on how to be a good talk show guest, take a page out of the Meredith Vieira play book. This seasoned professional on the other side of the desk, knows what to give and how often to give it in an interview situation. Not everyone does as well when the tables are turned. Her fearless approach, combined with energy and charm came shining through in her recent appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

Nothing phased Vieira, not a recounting of Jane Fonda’s “c**t” utterance that slipped out during a live interview; or even the “audio-erotic” sounds Meredith appeared to be making during a Today Show stunt in England — even jokingly claiming “that’s not the way I sound (during sex).” She had all the right answers and held nothing back.

Perhaps getting up at 4:30 in the morning does have its upside if you’re a student in the art of the interview. NBC not only made the right choice in their replacement for Katie Couric to keep the show on top, as the ratings of the past 18 months has proven, they also picked a seasoned veteran who is a perfect emissary for adding to their success.