A Brief Encounter With Fame and Cybill

She thinks there are no great dates left in our life, so I invite my wife to be on television, that jungle ride of talk shows and survival series; two things we know a lot about--talk and survival. Been married almost 20 years.

“Want to go on television?” I ask.

“Not really,” she says.

“OK.”

We are proof that not only have American talk shows run out of hosts, they’ve run out of guests. Shecky Greene is busy. Totie Fields is gone. Dom DeLuise has other things to do.

So they turn to us, two people whose seven minutes of fame will be wedged between hair color commercials and ads for hemorrhoid cream.

“Why do they want us?” my wife asks.

“Because we’re sexy,” I say.

“No, really,” she asks.

“Because you’re sexy,” I say.

“OK, I’m definitely not going,” she says.

They want us, in fact, because of some silly column I wrote on sports. Last fall, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece on a prenuptial agreement for football fanatics.

Now Cybill Shepherd’s new show wants us on to talk about it.

That’s Cybill--as in Cybill Shepherd--whose diving-board scene in “Last Picture Show” is one of the most-memorable movie moments.

She also did a show called “Moonlighting,” which I think is off the air now, and a show called “Cybill,” which is also off, I think.

Now she hosts this talk show, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” Hopefully, it’ll make better use of her great gifts.

“We’d like you and your wife to come on,” the production person says.

“Really?”

“We tape Thursday,” the production person says.

Seems simple enough. When we are done, they’ll pay us 100 bucks. Each. That’s a hundred for her and a hundred for me.

“Separate checks?” I ask the production person.

“I think so,” she says.

“Good,” I say.

And we go to Sony Studios in Culver City, which used to be the MGM lot, a big place where they film “Jeopardy” and many other important shows. A guy in a golf cart meets us at the parking lot.

“I’m just doing this for a while,” he says.

“Me too,” I say.

“Eventually, I’d like to direct or something,” he says.

“Me too,” I say.

Fifteen minutes later, they fit us with microphones and guide us toward the makeup room, where a bunch of other couples sit.

Here’s the theme of this particular show: Some men spend too much time watching sports. Some women hate this. That’s the theme of the show.

“What we’ll do is bring you on as part of the solution,” the assistant producer explains.

“We’re the solution?,” my wife says, sort of aghast that we could be the solution to anything.

“You can talk about your prenup,” she says.

Now as I said before, the earlier column was a tongue-in-cheek sendup of prenuptial agreements, applied to watching football on TV.

No. 1: No throwing pillows at the TV.

No. 2: No spitting.

Stuff like that.

But it’s clear now that the people here on Cybill’s show think the prenuptial was a true legal document.

“They think it’s real,” my wife whispers to me.

“It wasn’t?” I say.

“No,” she says.

“Oops,” I say.

By now we have on makeup and microphones. They’ve done a script and cue cards. My wife bought a new sweater. A nice white one she found on sale at Nordstrom’s.

“Oh no,” the stage manager says.

“What’s wrong?”

“You can’t wear white on camera,” the stage manager says.

Now, this really upsets my wife because she had originally bought a red sweater, only to have the people who set up our appearance later say she couldn’t wear the red sweater because that was a “Cybill color,” a color Cybill likes to wear and is off-limits to others.

So my wife returned the red sweater and bought a nice white one. Now they’re saying that’s illegal too.

“Does Cybill, like, own all the colors?” I ask.

“Let’s get you to wardrobe,” the stage manager says to my wife, and whisks her away by the elbow.

She returns in something small and tight. I think it’s a jacket Carol Kane wore on “Taxi” in 1977, when Latka and Simka were first dating.

“So much for my new sweater,” my wife says.

“You look very nice,” I say, meaning every word.

The rest of the experience is sort of a blur. They bring us on late in the show--by which time I am a little sleepy, having gorged myself on free food and too much milk.

Here’s pretty much how it goes: My wife does well, and I sort of stammer a lot and talk in reverse sentences, a conversational technique I’ve developed at hundreds of cocktail parties throughout my lifetime.

Worst of all, I talk while Cybill talks, which causes her to give me this sort of cross-eyed Cybill Shepherd look she used to shoot Bruce Willis on “Moonlighting,” giving me the false sense that I’m doing well when probably, really I am not.

At one point, Cybill means to say “sports-aholic” but says “sex-aholic” instead, drawing the hour’s biggest laugh. There’s a woman in row three who nearly laughs up her esophagus.

It’s clear at this point that the studio audience, made up mostly of 70-year-old women in 60-year-old sweaters, loves everything Cybill says or does.

Much like us, the other guests--Jon, Nicole, Charles and a couple of others whose names I can’t remember--are pretty incidental.

Still, it’s good to be a talk show guest. During breaks, the stagehands pass around little cups of water. And Altoids.

“This gin?” I ask.

“No, that’s water,” the stagehand says.

Anyway, the show airs a week from Friday, two days before the Super Bowl.

If you insist on watching, I recommend you view it with the sound turned all the way down.

I’d also advise watching it through one of those milk-carton filters you make to observe solar eclipses.

In that case, Cybill will appear red. Which, if you haven’t heard, is one of her colors.

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Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.