Monty, still dealing

I'll fess up that shopping games like Let's Make a Deal aren't my faves. But when a legend returns, well, everybody has to take note.

Tomorrow Monty Hall comes back to the show he started 50 years ago. The proudly Canadian Monty - he's even won the Order of Canada, an award I never knew existed - gave a long interview to a reporter up north about LMAD's origins. "We took it to a knitting club in the valley once at eight in the morning." The pitchman never relented in his drive to sell the show, and he finally got NBC to bite in 1964. The rest is zonk history.

Monty will at last get a lifetime achievement Emmy this summer. His wife already has one of the awards, so "I can put my Emmy alongside her Emmy and they can have a bunch of little Emmys." Even at 91 Monty can turn a quip.

Audiences may have gotten more jaded and blasé over the decades, but Monty says they still go hyper when the cameras roll on Let's Make a Deal. "It's an exciting moment. When somebody points a finger at you and says, 'You're next,' you don't even remember your name." Nobody will forget Monty's name any time soon.