Howard Stern claims that he’s ‘no longer friends’ with Bill Maher after accusing the TV host of making ‘nutty’ and ‘sexist’ statements.
Radio shock-jock Stern explained the situation – or his side of it, at least – on his Sirius XM show, claiming that Maher made some disparaging comments about him on his podcast Club Random.
Speaking on his eponymous radio show on Tuesday (19 September), the 69-year-old said: "The guys played me a clip from Bill Maher's new podcast, and he was actually dumping on me.”
The pair had reconciled their differences after a long feud when Stern agreed to appear on Maher’s HBO TV show, but this latest unpleasantness seems to have set the relationship back even further.
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Stern continued: "I haven't spoken to Bill Maher in so long,
"I had years when I didn't talk to him when we were not friends. I did the show as a favor to him because we were repairing a relationship."
That apparently didn’t stop Maher from having a dig, though.
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"He took a big shot at me,” Stern said. "Basically, he says, 'Howard Stern always gets on the radio and says he loves his wife.' I've never been criticized for this.
“He goes, 'Haven't we had enough of that? What about his first wife? I feel really bad for her'."
Stern is married to Beth Ostrosky Stern and has been since 2008, but before that he was married to Alison Berns from 1978 to 2000.
And Stern clearly didn’t like Maher’s comments on his marriages.
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He went on: "What a sexist thing to say. What a convoluted, nutty thing to say. He says it must hurt [Berns'] feelings that I'm in love with a different woman.
“It's assuming that he knows something about my first marriage.
“That of course the man must be leaving the woman and the woman must be devastated and be sitting around pining away for her famous man.
"I don't think I come on the air every day and say I love my wife. But I thought it was a pretty positive message, especially with my audience, to say to guys, 'Instead of ragging on our wives, how about talking how we appreciate and love them?'"
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But it didn’t end there, either.
Stern then claims that he emailed Maher with his concerns, but never heard back.
"I wrote in an email, I said, 'Why don't you give me a phone call? Why don't you tell me what you think about my life and my marriage?' But of course he never wrote me back," he claimed.
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"I just wanted to see how brave he was.
“If he was brave enough to call me and actually get on the phone with me, and zero response."
He concluded: "I think I'm no longer friends with him. I went out of my way to do that show. I don't like doing TV shows.”
UNILAD has contacted representatives for Maher for comment.
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Weird, HBO
Tom Wood