He’s right. He’d make a hot Sally Jessy.

James Brown might still be the Hardest Working Man in Show Business (despite being dead — that just proves how hard he works), but Jerry Springer might be the jet-laggiest. Since he started doing America’s Got Talent Live Springer spends five days here, two in Connecticut and half a night in Chicago before getting on the carousel all over again.

He’s breaking things up Saturday night when he hosts the Dysfunctional Halloween Bash at Hawaiian Tropic Zone. Just what Halloween needed — an excuse to get even more dysfunctional. The costume contest comes in two parts — $500 for sexiest and $500 for most dysfunctional couple. Who better to judge the absolute rock bottom of what you can scrape together in your most white trashy fever dreams?

How’s everything going with Talent?

It’s really going great and I didn’t know that it would, because you can do an act on television and if they put the appropriate packages together, they can make it look pretty good. When you’re out there live in a theater audience, it’s a whole new game. If these people didn’t have much experience, it could be really intimidating. But the fact is, they really carry it off every night. The audience seems to love what they do. It’s a nice show because there’s nice variety to it. I’m loving it, as it turns out. I did it because I do love the television show and I thought, ‘this will be a hoot. Being in Vegas, how cool is that?’ And then I’m actually doing the show and it’s a very, very entertaining show. And yes, the people have talent.

Has it been a big adjustment, settling in out here?

It’s not so much the adjustment as the travel is unbelievable. I do five nights a week here, Wednesday through Sunday night. Sunday night as soon as the show is over I race to the airport. I fly to Connecticut and I get in between 5 and 6 in the morning. I go up to Greenwich and I sleep from about 7 to 11. At noon I’m picked up to do the television show and we do three shows on Monday and two on Tuesday. As soon as the second show’s finished I race to the airport and fly to Chicago to spend Tuesday nights with my family. Wednesday mornings I’m flying to Vegas for five nights in Vegas. There are no days off. It’s such a full schedule, but the work isn’t difficult. I’m in show business, so it’s fine. I can’t tell you it’s very difficult, what I do. It’s just a lot of travel.

That’s a grueling schedule, and with a stage show you’d think it would be hard with that little sleep to stay sharp for anything that’s unexpected.

I’ve just done this for so long. I’m 65 now and I’ve been in front of a camera since, if you count being mayor, really, for 40 years. I’m just really used to it. This summer I was on Broadway doing the musical Chicago. I’m not particularly talented, but I probably have a skill at it. I think that it’s just become second nature now. I’m very comfortable in front of an audience. I get up there and tell jokes and talk with them, introduce the acts and banter with the acts. I’m very comfortable doing it, to be honest.

Let’s talk about what you have planned for Halloween.

Well, I think I’m going as Sally Jessy Raphael. No, at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone they’re having their big Halloween party and they asked me to be the host. I thought that would be a fun thing to do. They’re going to have a costume contest and it’s going to range from dysfunctional couple costume to sexiest Halloween outfit. It’s basically an excuse for a Halloween party. It should be fun. Planet Hollywood is a pretty hopping place.

You’re not going to do any panels, guests, anything like that?

I don’t think I’ll have to. Call me crazy, but I don’t think Vegas needs me to rile things up. You do very well on your own, thank you.

So the show is a limited engagement. Have you thought about going longer?

We’re doing 10 weeks, yeah. Then we’ll see. I just don’t know if I could work things out with my schedule. It’s also going to depend on the availability of the acts. Most of them aren’t professionals. They have other lives and families and everything else going on. They’re not as crazy as I am in terms of going back and forth. That’s what limits the length of the show, but who knows. They could like it so much that they decide they want to be doing this. It would be pretty dependent on that.

By Jason Scavone

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