Mr. Warmth talks about dining with Jay Leno and David Letterman, acting with Clark Gable and Robert De Niro and the night he took on Bill Gates and Warren Buffett

Q1 Playboy: What's funny about being an octogenarian?

Don Rickles: The funniest thing about being 81 has been that I don't realize it. I had an 80th birthday party last year, and that was the only way I knew it was true. I don't feel 81, I don't act 81, and they say I don't look 81. My son Larry likes to go upstairs to my room, where I've got pictures on the wall of me with all the biggies. He'll walk through and do a status report on each one: "Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Critical. Serious. Hanging in there. Okay. And possibly a month, tops."

Q2 Playboy: Since you and Mrs. Rickles have dined with television's greatest late-night talk-show hosts, give us your survey of their private eating habits.

Rickles: Letterman is very much a recluse. I always kidded him on the show: "Dave, when are we going to have dinner together?" I'd make a whole big thing. Finally, one night Dave said to meet him over at the famous 21 restaurant. I couldn't believe it. We went there, and the maître d' said, "Mr. Letterman will meet you down in the cellar." The cellar! Suddenly, it's dinner with Howard Hughes. It was a secret room in the wine cellar from the speakeasy days. The second time, I had dinner with him and one of his writers in a different cellar -- I swear to God -- this time down four flights of steps. Maybe he's related to Bela Lugosi. Johnny Carson was the same way. He was very uncomfortable among a lot of people. He was marvelous if we were just four or six but forget about any more at a table. And with Leno you feel as if you're in a diner: "A napkin? Where do you get those?" But remember, he likes to eat under his cars while he's giving them a lube job. Not a big gourmet guy, if you know what I mean.

Q3 Playboy: What career advice can you give Triumph the Insult Comic Dog?

Rickles: I've never seen the bit, but I've heard about it. I mean, the dog's a puppet with a guy's hand up its ass. No wonder it has mood swings! There's another guy who does insults, Lewis Black. They say he's a lot like me. I don't know if that's true or not. I can take pride in saying I'm one of a kind. I think that's what made me successful. When I first started doing this, there were a lot of problems. People would say, "Who needs this guy?" To this day, I'm established, but people who don't know me personally think I'm going to walk up to them and say, "You're a hockey puck! You're a moron! You're a jerk! Get out of my life!" You know I'm not that way.

Q4 Playboy: You brought the language an altogether new meaning for the term hockey puck. Can you figure out why it haunts you to this day?