So when I got the chance to do my first talk show, 50 years ago last month, I never had any writers. There was no budget - it was just me and the camera and my friend who was the director. I talked about what I'd done that week.

I plan on getting out there and mixing with the crowd. I want to show everyone what happens in Times Square not from a distance, but from right there in the crowd.

I missed so many opportunities along the way to do what I wanted to do because I didn't have the confidence to tell myself, much less anybody else, 'Yes, this is the business I wanted to be a part of, and not feeling that I had the talent... and letting it go all the way through Notre Dame and then through two years of Navy service.

As a matter of fact I don't like politics. I really don't. I think it's so jaded now and everybody has to follow the party line.

I guess people wonder if I'm the same on camera as I am off, and I'm pretty much the same, I really am. But that's always asked of me.

You get a taste here in New Orleans that you don't get anywhere else in the country.

So when I got the chance to do my first talk show, 50 years ago last month, I never had any writers. There was no budget - it was just me and the camera and my friend who was the director. I talked about what I'd done that week.