She is big, busty, black and bossy and quite successful. Wendy Williams is a daytime talk show host. She will comment on every celebrity with nothing held back doesn’t hang out with any celebrities and is happy to claim to be a devoted wife and   Mom to her son living in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood. She is TV’s anti-celebrity celebrity. Somehow she has maintained her show for 6 seasons and is one of the most successful talk show hosts on daytime TV. She admits a shameful love of wigs and will adjust them openly on air and her over the top sometimes gaudy sense of style she gets people to watch her brand of shamefulness.

Her ratings this year are higher than ever. She is the unlikely survivor in the fickle world of daytime talk. At age 50 she is thriving as a single host while others like Queen Latifa, Anderson Cooper and Bethany Frankel all have failed. No celebrity is too big or too small when she sits down with her cup of tea to gossip in her segment called Hot Topics. For example, when discussing Bruce Jenner’s decision to become a woman she had the courage to comment, “I feel duped because he has become the same fame whore that the rest of that family has been.”  I like her because she has the balls to say stuff that few others say. That must be the not so secret, secret to her success.

If and when celebrity publicists call to complain, she keeps them away from her and doesn’t even want to know about it. She makes her staff deal with them but does that just put her in her own jaded little world? She is happy to admit that she has no celebrity friends in her telephone. She has no need to be out to lunch with a group of celebrity girls. Sure, how is she going to gossip about them openly on TV if she is friends with anyone?  She got her start as a shock jock radio DJ. Now she sits atop a fast growing multi-million media empire that includes a production company, best-selling books, a clothing line and even comedy shows but she is happy to keep it simple in the suburbs of New Jersey.

She is happy to describe herself as being a little tacky but lovable. Once she was in tears on the show saying that her son doesn’t love her anymore and that is the way she is. Wendy Williams speaks without filter or pretense. She will catch a kiss from her screaming audience and tell them that she just put it under her wig.  Who would say something like that? Only Wendy Williams.  She was banned from radio broadcasts in 1998 after making accusations about Sean Combs. In 2003 Wendy, a former cocaine user herself pressed Whitney Houston about her cocaine admissions in an on air fight.  Despite her bumpy past, Whitney says she has no regrets. She is living her dreams in her own unique way and taking her brand of style all the way to the bank.