Regis Philbin

Television host

REGIS PHILBIN, who has died at 88, was a TV host who shared his life with morning viewers for decades and also hosted the American version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Celebrities routinely stopped by on Philbin’s eponymous syndicated morning show, but its heart was in the first 15 minutes, when he and co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and later Kelly Ripa bantered about the events of the day – and Philbin’s mock indignation over not getting the best seat at a restaurant the night before, or being henpecked by his partner, became the stuff of legend.

He hosted Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee from 1985-2000, and then Live! With Regis and Kelly from 2001 until his retirement in 2011.

After hustling his way into an entertainment career by parking cars at a Los Angeles TV station, Philbin logged more than 15,000 hours on the air, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most broadcast hours logged by a TV personality.

He was even a fashion trendsetter, putting out a line of monochramactic shirts and ties to match those he wore on air.

Regis Francis Xavier Philbin grew up in the New York borough of the Bronx, the son of Italian-Irish parents and named after the Roman Catholic boys high school his father attended.

After leaving the Navy in 1955, he talked his way into a meeting with the head of a local TV station in Los Angeles. After parking cars, he progressed into work as a stagehand, courier, news writer and producer of a sports programme. When its presenter did not show up one day, Philbin filled in.

He got far more on-air experience in San Diego in the early 1960s, when the station there began producing The Regis Philbin Show for a national audience, and later progressed to co-starring with the comedian Joey Bishop in a late night talk show.

Despite hosting the series Regis Philbin’s Health Styles in the 1980s, Philbin had health issues. Doctors performed an angioplasty to relieve a blocked artery in 1993, and he underwent bypass surgery in 2007 at age 75.

He is survived by his second wife, Joy, and their daughters JJ and Joanna Philbin, as well as his daughter from his first marriage to Catherine Faylen.