Breakfast w/Greg: A busy weekend; Happy Birthday Thomas Roberts; Chris Evert’s latest split

Good morning!

I’m recovering from a busy weekend that included the West Hollywood Book Fair where Susan Olsen (Cindy Brady from The Brady Bunch) was in hand to talk about her new book about the infamous Brady Bunch Variety Hour and that was followed by a magical session with Carol Channing who was in conversation  with Bruce Vilanch.

I’ll have those items for you later today and both have some juicy stories including one when Ethel Merman calls Carol “c**t!” when she can’t remember her character’s name while they were shooting an episode of The Love Boat with Ann Miller.

At 88, Miss Channing is a national treasure and as sharp and funny as ever.

BIRTHDAY WISHES: I’ll never forget being at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Assn. conference in Miami back in 2006 and listening to then CNN Headline News anchor Thomas Roberts talk about being an openly gay man in television news.

He left the convention kind of a rock star because we were all so impressed with how he conducted himself and let’s face it, we all thought he was REALLY hot.

Thomas showed courage then in being so open with a roomful of journalists and again the next year when he testified against the priest who had sexually molested him as a teenager and discussed his ordeal with Anderson Cooper on a CNN news special.

He left CNN a few years ago and spent some time as a regular correspondent for The Insider. This year, he hosted red carpet coverage of the Screen Actors Guild for TNT.

Today, Thomas turns 37 years old and I wanted to be sure and wish him a very happy birthday.

SURPRISE SPLIT: Boy, I didn’t see this coming. But then again, who saw Chris Evert and Greg Norman leaving their respective spouses for each other a few years ago anyway?

Married just 15 months, the couple has already separated.

Evert, a six-time US Open champion during her hall of fame tennis career, was America’s Sweetheart and my all-time favorite tennis player. But her image took a real hit when this mother of three dumped her husband of 18 years, Olympic skiier Andy Mill, and took up with his best friend,  Norman, who had been married for 25 years and has two kids with his ex-wife.

Mill said of his ex-wife’s latest split: “I just feel really badly for these two families, thinking about the destruction in the wake of what they’ve done … It’s horrible, what they’ve done.”

Evert has admitted she and Norman had been attracted before their previous marriages ended: “It was like an irresistible force,” she told US Vogue last August. “How do you explain something like that?”

How does she explain herself now?