Lucy 101 & Cohen's Cocktails

"Lucille Ball FAQ" by James Sheridan and Barry Monosh
"Most Talkative" by Andy Cohen
Reviewed by David Marshall James

What, you may well be wondering, do Lucille Ball and Andy Cohen have in common?

Aside from Andy's preference for ginger hair, that is.

His memoir, "Most Talkative," will soon lead the reader to discover his early fascination with Miss Lucille Desiree Ball.

Fine choice, AC. Back to you in a moment or two.

"Lucille Ball FAQ" is a vast compendium of info pertaining to all of Lucy's TV, stage, radio, and film work.

And we do mean ALL of it-- all four TV series (five, if you count the revamping of "The Lucy Show," sans Vivian Vance, during the mid 1960s).

This indispensable tome also includes bios of the essential players in Lucy's life, professionally speaking and en famille.

Also: Explanations of the pop-culture references from the TV programs, as well as Lucy's one-degree's of separation from scores of Hollywood luminaries.

Tallulah Bankhead and Joan Crawford gave her fits.

However, she loved Paul Lynde. And she would have loved you, too, Andy Cohen.

Oh, she would have told you to clean up your language as well as you clean up your Clubhouse, and to lighten up on the libations, but that's what ginger-haired grandmothers do, don't they?

AC's memoir follows him from St. Louis (from birth through high school), to college in Boston, to studies abroad, to an internship at CBS in NYC, to his return to the "Tiffany Network" (there's a pop-culture ref of yore for ya), where he rose through the proverbial ranks to become producer of their morning show.

Emily Dickinson wrote that "Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul," whilst for AC, "Hope is a feather boa."

If there hadn't been a Bravo channel, he would have invented it. He's certainly built a clubhouse there, on "Watch What Happens Live."

When you die and go to Heaven, AC, you can have Tallulah and Joan as guests.

Lucy, too. Just not on the same night.
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