King Toasts 50 Years on Air, Observer Toasts New Website

KING AND QUEEN Babs, Larry

What does five decades in the broadcasting business get you? For starters, the right to trot out the same stories everyone's heard you tell dozens of times without getting called out on it.

At his 50th anniversary party last night, Larry King recounted how he landed his first job in radio, only to be told to ditch his "ethnic" last name, Zeiger. At the top of his first broadcast, "I said, 'Good morning. My name is Larry King, and that's the first time I've ever said that,'" he reminisced, before wrapping up his speech with a Borscht-belt joke about an unmarried man and woman who decide to "play man and wife" while sharing a sleeper-car on a train. (Punchline: "Get your own damn blanket!")