The former Howard Stern sidekick was sitting inside the new Varick Street studio that is home to The Nick & Artie Show, the sports-and-comedy talk show on Sirius Radio and DirecTV that he co-hosts with fellow comedian Nick DiPaolo. He was cradling his gut, pointing at the scars where nearly three years ago, in his Hoboken home, he took a 13-inch Wolfgang Puck kitchen knife and stabbed himself repeatedly: Six times with hesitation. Three times with conviction.

Artie Lange Performing at The Mandalay Bay Theatre in Las Vegas in 2008 (photo courtesy of Getty Images)

He has since been treated and released from three separate psychiatric wards. His sanity and sobriety restored—“It took me a year and a half to get right in the head”—Mr. Lange has now eased himself back into the comedy world.

His jowly face, though still porcine and scruffy, no longer bears the wear and tear of all those long weekends performing in venues across the country, followed by long weekdays witnessing porn stars bringing themselves to orgasm while taping The Howard Stern Show.

“It was like [going from] a paper route to being Hugh Hefner,” he said of those days.

The 44-year-old has sworn off the cardinal vices—particularly booze, gambling, drugs and prostitutes—that fueled his initial rise to comedy fame. He now spends the lushing hours of 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. in the sanctuary of his new show. The studio has been outfitted with bruh-friendly toys like a basketball shootout game and a pool table. The kitchen is stocked with water and snacks and not a trace of hooch (Mr. Lange was nursing a bottle of Nestle Quik during one taping). The show consists of Mr. Lange chewing the fat with Mr. DiPaolo over anything from the futility of the Boston Red Sox to the (allegedly) indiscriminate sexual tastes of Dan, their producer.

“When somebody calls up and asks about North Carolina’s defense, we go, ‘Call Dan Patrick,’” said Mr. DiPaolo. “We want to talk about A-Rod banging this broad.”

Throw in the occasional guest like Esquire writer Scott Raab and former NBA player John Salley, and the result is a sharp, funny alternative to ESPN’s eternal onslaught of pompous programming; it’s like listening to two Jersey galoots (Mr. DiPaolo is originally from Massachusetts) rip on Eli Manning from the bleachers of the old Meadowlands stadium.

While the show is on Sirius, it is also syndicated on regular radio stations, leaving the duo at the mercy of the FCC.

“For the four years I was on Howard and Sirius, I was like going 100 miles an hour,” Mr. Lange said. “You can say whatever you want, and that was fun, that kind of freedom. Here, we don’t have that.”

Mr. Lange In Unhealthier Times (photo courtesy of Getty Images)

Still, the fact that just two years ago Mr. Lange was sitting in an insane asylum, playing Scrabble with a 400-pound methadone addict and an 80-pound meth head, is not lost on him.

“I said, ‘Well this is it. I’m playing Scrabble in a psych ward, so it’s probably over,’” he said. He figured, if he got lucky, “maybe I would play the fat neighbor on a shitty sitcom and stay in show business and do my act at the Mandalay Bay once in a while,” he said in his nicotine-stained Jersey growl. “But this is crazy.”

There is always the possibility of another fuck-up in a career that’s had its share of them, along with those moments of redemption. In the 1990s, Mr. Lange got canned from Mad TV, the show that started his career, for doing enough cocaine to wipe out a small horse farm, at one point mixing the drug into his whiskey when his nose became too sore to snort it. He cleaned up his act in rehab, went on to star in the amusing but unsuccessful Dirty Work with Norm McDonald, then bounced around sitcoms and comedy clubs before landing in the one chair his oversized keister was born to sit in.

When longtime Howard Stern sidekick Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling left The Howard Stern Show over a salary dispute in 2001, Mr. Lange got the nod to join Stern’s morning crew.

“It’s a powerful show to be on,” said Mr. Lange. The gig did wonders for his stand-up career—he sold out a show at Carnegie Hall in three hours—and for his wallet. At his peak, Mr. Lange was making $800,000 a year from The Howard Stern Show and $2 million touring the road.

The schedule was brutal, however, requiring him to wake up at 4:45 a.m. each morning.

“That’s when I was always going home,” he said. Mr. Lange would try to ride out the day without sleeping, sometimes still buzzed on the previous night’s intake of Jack Daniels, pills or heroin.

“Howard’s got the most observant, like, keen eye for anything on the planet,” he said. “Like if I tried that a couple of nights, he would say ‘Robin, Artie seems drunk.’ And he was right.”

Though he lasted eight years, the schedule wore him out, leading to the occasional flare-up. In 2008, he attacked his assistant Teddy on the air after an argument over money, coming at the much smaller man like a walrus in a New York Yankees T-shirt. After being restrained by three colleagues, he offered Mr. Stern his resignation. “Howard, I love you, but I can’t do it anymore. I’m an outta control person,” he said during the show.

Mr. Lange would continue to appear on the program for a year, until 2010, when his mother, Judy, found him inside his apartment unconscious and bleeding. (It was his second unsuccessful suicide attempt. In 1995, he’d tried to overdose on Resterol, a sleeping aide, and Excedrin PM.)

In 2010, Mr. Lange found himself inside the Summit Oaks Hospital in New Jersey, where a large, intimidating fellow patient recognized the portly comedian, who was wearing a “Jimmy Kimmel Live” T-shirt.

“He looked at my shirt, and because he was a lunatic, he thought I was Jimmy Kimmel,” Mr. Lange recalled. “He starts screaming ‘you’re Jimmy Kimmel! You’re Jimmy Kimmel!’

“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m Jimmy Kimmel.’”

One day, Mr. Lange was invited by his new friend to join him in a reading of the Koran, which he promised would save the comedian’s life. He asked Mr. Lange to place his right hand on the holy book and to close his eyes. “We pray on the Koran for 30 seconds, and then he goes, ‘Thank you, Jimmy. I’ll see you in heaven,’” he remembered. “At least I got that going for me.”

Nick DiPaolo and Artie Lange at a celebrity fantasy football draft in July (photo courtesy of Getty Images)

His lowest moment, he said, was sitting inside a common area in another psych ward, watching television, when his Comedy Central stand-up special Jack and Coke came on the air. He excused himself to his bedroom and locked himself inside.

“I sat in my dark room, and I listened to 20 lunatics laughing at my jokes,” he remembered. “That symbolized what I was going through.”

Mr. Lange rejoined society just about the same time Mr. DiPaolo was putting together plans to launch his own radio show. A few months later, Mr. Lange was back on the air. And for the first time in his life, the show was named for him.

Such is the luck of Artie Lange: He can flame out on drugs, burn bridges with the biggest names in entertainment, try to kill himself twice (not exactly a comedic move) and find his way back into the spotlight. Hell, he can make a guest appearance on Joe Buck’s now-defunct HBO talk show, liven up—or sabotage—the show by suggesting his host’s favorite website is “suckingdick.com,” then get Mr. Buck to write the foreword to Mr. Lange’s upcoming book, Crash and Burn.

“A lot of people don’t get that second shot,” said Mr. DiPaolo. “But he was so popular on Howard, and he is the working-class stiff, and they love him.”

Which is not to say that Mr. Lange is entirely reformed. He spent his summer break on a trip to Paris with his 28-year-old girlfriend. At one point, an argument between them got heated. Mr. Lange said he called his girlfriend a “effing c.,” took a swing at the cops who were called over to calm him down, and found himself in a Parisian prison cell.

“There was a crazy guy in my cell and he was in my face, [saying] ‘blue fromage,’” said Mr. Lange.

“I said to the French guard, ‘I think this guy belongs in a psych ward,’ and the guard goes, ‘Monsieur, you are in the psych ward.’” He and his girlfriend are no longer dating.

Back in New York City, Mr. Lange was having bladder-control problems, a sign that he may be pre-diabetic.

“I was like a coyote. I was all over New York, I was leaving my scent,” he said. He was given medication to help fix the problem, which he was slow to take at the time.

Mr. Lange at the Paris Theater in June (photo courtesy of Getty Images)

As a result, accidents happened. Not long ago, as he was conducting an interview on-air, Mr. Lange needed to use the can. He did so literally by picking up a trash can and letting fly. Then he accidentally sloshed his bucket of piss against the wall.

He jokingly asked the Canavan girls, a pair of identical blonde stunners who work as Mr. Lange’s production assistants, to mop up his urine. They refused. Eventually the mess was cleaned up, and he was asked by DirecTV to take a day off. After threatening to quit the show on his Twitter account, Artie eventually returned to the air.

“I am taking the medicine now; it stopped,” he said of his bladder troubles.

Still, whether the pattern of ups and downs for Mr. Lange has stopped remains to be seen. Clean for two years and seeming genuinely giddy to be back on the air, Mr. Lange looks rested, as fresh as a daisy.

While he has intimated in the past that he would like to return to The Howard Stern Show, he appears content to grow what he has with Mr. DiPaolo.

“My situation got so crazy that everybody was in an awkward position that I put them in, so I don’t think that’s a possibility anymore, even if both entities wanted to,” he said of returning to Stern. “A year ago, I would have said it would be amazing, but I listen to Howard all the time, and the show is still great, and I am sure he is happy with it. But this situation is a dream situation for me.”

"The Nick & Artie Show" airs nightly from 10 p.m. - 1 a.m. on DirecTV's Audience Network

drosen@observer.com

This morning we caught up with mega-chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck at the New York Women in Communications Matrix Awards where he presented Ruth Reichl with an award for her achievements as Gourmet’s editor-in-chief.

Naturally we asked Los Angeles-based Mr. Puck if he’s had any exceptional dining experiences while visiting our celebrity chef studded city.

“Oh yes, I had a fantastic dinner at Jean Georges last night and attended a dinner at Brasserie Cognac the other night,” he told the Daily Transom. But, what about New York’s new foodie darling, David Chang? Hasn’t it become a requirement for culinary enthusiasts everywhere to pay a visit to Momofuku or the newly opened Ko when visiting our city?

Surely, Mr. Puck has noticed the elaborate and fairly recent coverage of Mr. Chang and his cooking in the New Yorker, GQ, and even Ms. Reichl’s Gourmet.

“Who? No, I don’t know him; I have never been to his restaurant,” said Mr. Puck.

That hurts.

Yesterday in Los Angeles, she held a rare single-constituency fund-raiser – it was exclusively for women -- at the Bel Air home of Bren Simon, the wife of shopping center mogul Mel Simon.

According to Yashar Hedayat, a key West Coast fund-raiser for Clinton, about 200 women showed up on Sunday for an event that took in what he called a "mid-six-figures" haul.  Elected officials at the $1,000 minimum event – menu: mini-cheeseburgers -- included Wendy Greuel, the President Pro Tempore of the Los Angeles City Council and Judy Chu, an elected representative on the Board of Equalization, a tax collecting body. The audience also included Ilene Chaiken, the creator and producer or Showtime's Lesbian drama "the L Word," Wolfgang Puck's ex-wife and business partner Barbara Lazaroff and Cheryl Saban, the wife of major Clinton donor Haim Saban.

In her speech, Clinton emphasized her health care plan, and fondly remembered bringing her daughter Chelsea to political events for Geraldine Ferraro, according to Hedayat, who said he was one of the few men in attendance. Clinton then referred to this election as the most historically significant since Ferraro ran for Vice President in 1984. 

Clinton will be doing another low-cost event in Los Angeles on May 30 for young professionals. Cost of admission: $250.    

Mr. English is one of the country's most ambitious chefs-and with his Tom Cruise–on-steroids good looks, one of the most likely to be nuzzled by a diner. Although he began his career cooking simple Italian fare at a small restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., Mr. English has always fancied himself far more than a small-town cook. He knew he wanted to be famous long before Emeril Lagasse fired his first "Bam!". Through a combination of good looks, media savvy, shrewd business practices and crispy pizzas, he has been anointed one of the rising stars of the Iron Chef era, and his Olives Group is fast becoming the T.G.I. Friday's of the Williams-Sonoma set. Now Mr. English, who thoroughly wooed both the press and the public in the bush leagues, faces his most daunting task: feeding New Yorkers. Needless to say, the guys back home are dying to see him blow it.

Mr. English has been a culinary rock star since the early 90's, when the original Olives began to eclipse all of its competitors as a dining destination. Since then, he has built an empire of Olives and Figs (his casual pizza and pasta restaurants) in Washington, D.C., Aspen, Colo., Las Vegas and Israel, plus other restaurants in Westport, Conn., and Myrtle Beach, S.C. He appears regularly on Martha Stewart's morning program. He just published his third cookbook in four years. In September, he opened a Figs in La Guardia Airport's central terminal, serving wild mushroom pizza with fontina and truffle oil to bumped passengers; and on Nov. 25, he officially unveiled what he hopes will be his crowning achievement, Olives New York. "I've probably looked at 20 locations down here over the last 10 years," Mr. English said. "I just turned 40 and I said, 'You know what? Either I'm going to try it now or I'm not going to do it at all.'"

Mr. English has good reason to be nerv-ous. Over the years, many chefs who were superstars behind their native range have been attacked (or worse, ignored) by New Yorkers. Recently, Alain Ducasse-arguably the world's greatest chef-has been savaged. And Washington, D.C.–based Jean-Louis Palladin's midtown restaurant opened last year to barely audible fanfare and is now being replaced by Pino Luongo's Coco Pazzo Teatro. The woes of both chefs have been largely blamed on their status as absentee landlords with big empires-and correspondingly large egos. But Mr. English-who has a pretty healthy ego himself-wants this to work so badly that last month he left the wife and kids behind and moved into his own pad in Soho. "I'm here full-time," he said. "I think you really need to submerse yourself in this culture."

Mr. English said that he's on a "cuisine retreat." "It's like I'm headed off to study Buddhism in the Himalayas," he said. His secular studies include hanging out with other telegenic chefs, like Bobby Flay or Douglas Rodriguez, at homey "haunts" like Frank's steakhouse or Florent in the meatpacking district. "We go to church together," he said, laughing. "We eat and drink at each other's restaurants. It's sometimes where the sermon is held-the late-night sermon."

Over the years, there have been many rumors that Mr. English and his wife Olivia were splitting up, that his ambitions-along with the constant attention of female fans-had been too much for the couple. Reached at her home in Boston, Mrs. English closed the door on her three screaming kids and acknowledged that, yes, "in a weak moment, all of it does get to me."

"I married him because he was a passionate hunk," she said. "He's out there. That's O.K. I didn't marry Mr. White Bread."

Despite Mr. English's move to New York, the couple are still together. They usually see each other twice a week. When the situation becomes a bit too much to bear for Mrs. English, Mr. English reminds her of all that his career has brought her.

"He'll say, 'Just think of your horse,'" she said. "He'll remind me of the nice things that I have because he goes out there and is Mr. Charming."

Boston is a small town with many astoundingly bad restaurants. Mr. English is sometimes credited with putting the city on the culinary map. The Boston press has devoted numerous covers and hundreds of column inches to fawning over the pretty-boy cook-if only, some say, for lack of material. Though no one in the local media or restaurant industry will go on the record to admit it, not everyone is a fan of Mr. English's brazen, sometimes overwhelming Mediterranean creations, such as steak served over roasted eggplant creama with braised lamb-shank risotto with a black olive, feta and tomato-mint salsa. (Mr. English says that the dishes are smaller and "toned down" a bit for the New York audience.) The night of The Observer 's visit, the luxury items-pasta with veal and white truffle butter and a coronary-inducing black truffle and foie gras flan-were sturdy but ultimately underwhelming to the spoiled New York palate. Even the waiter suggested mostly hearty peasant dishes, like charred octopus with chickpeas.

The only writer to attempt to knock Mr. English off his truffle-studded pedestal has been GQ food critic Alan Richman. Three years ago, he wrote a scathing indictment of Beantown cuisine entitled "The Boston Glob," in which he blamed much of the city's "culinary masochism" on Mr. English, whose clumsy imitators had taken to preparing all sorts of absurd concoctions. Although he conceded that Mr. English's food was largely "delicious," he wrote that there was just far too much of it. Mr. Richman, who was once a sports writer for The Boston Globe , wrote that "basically, his style is not haute cuisine, but a heap of cuisine." The article wreaked culinary havoc.

"I think he was still pissed off about being fired from The Globe ," said Mr. English.

Reached at his home in Westchester, Mr. Richman was asked what he thought now that the poster boy for the "Boston Glob" had set up shop in Manhattan. "I don't think this guy can miss," admitted Mr. Richman. "I don't know that New York is looking for his kind of food, but they're going to like it. He's like some sort of sculptor putting together modern art that is almost incomprehensible but somehow works. There is some genius to his cooking."

Mr. English is dreading the verdict of New York Times reviewer William Grimes. "In Boston, I never really get great reviews," said Mr. English. "I mean, I get pretty decent reviews. I never get the top reviews, because we don't have tablecloths-we don't have a lot of the things reviewers want." Despite a history of critical mediocrity, Mr. English still puts himself in the culinary pantheon alongside masters like Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud. He is LeRoy Neiman to their Monet. His real genius is not so much in his cooking as it is in his proess as mass marketer of the Todd English Phenomenon. "Olives is far more of a middle-class restaurant," said Mr. Richman. "It's not what we in the old days would call a 'gourmet room.'"

Years ago, before he started cooking, Mr. English dreamed of becoming a major- league baseball star. He fell into a career in food after he dropped out of college; he was kicked off the baseball team for poor grades. Mr. English's first real cooking job was at a seafood shack on Martha's Vineyard. "I didn't put it on my résumé," he said. "All we did was smoke bongs and cook. It was awesome." In the early 80's, Mr. English graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and then moved to Manhattan, where he worked at La Côte Basque under legendary chef Jean-Jacques Rachou. He worked alongside such future stars as David Bouley, Rick Moonen and Waldy Malouf. While his colleagues stayed in New York to toil in temporary obscurity, he headed off to conquer the provinces. "It's like the difference between Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio," said Mr. English. "Ted Williams had a higher batting average, yet DiMaggio got all the press. DiMaggio was the bad boy and Williams was the sweetheart. That's the difference between New York and Boston."

In Boston, Mr. English became the Ted Williams of the food world. His first restaurant, which opened in 1989, was an overnight success, and the affable Mr. English quickly became a local celebrity. Annie Copps, a food writer who once cooked for Mr. English and now helps in the production of his television appearances, said that he has been ambitious since the beginning. "He definitely knew that he wanted to cook his food for a lot of people," she said. "He was self- confident, but he was never arrogant."

Some beg to differ. Ken Oringer, one of the new crop of top chefs in Boston, said that Mr. English has never been "lacking" when it comes to arrogance, that his brashness has as much to do with his success as his cooking. "Some people are content in improving their own restaurants in their own city," he said. "I guess Todd wanted to take the show on the road. It will be interesting to see how the reviews go in New York. I think he's going to be hard-pressed to get three stars."

Mr. English said that he has always known he wouldn't spend his career confined to a quirky little restaurant in the culinary backwaters. For inspiration, he looked to Los Angeles chef Wolfgang Puck, the man widely credited for starting the celebrity-chef phenomenon. There are many parallels between the two men. Both have built empires on pizza: Mr. Puck's are small and delicate; Mr. English's are large, rustic and often bizarre. He likes to serve a sauerkraut pizza with cheese, kielbasa and mustard. ("It sounds gross, but it's truly a great pie," said Mr. English. "It's basically a Reuben.") By the time Mr. English opened the first of his five pizza restaurants, Mr. Puck's pies were in every grocery store, and fast-food joints bearing his name were in shopping malls all over the West Coast. Mr. English hopes to open Figs in airports across the country, and is currently at work on his own line of packaged foods. "People have called me the East Coast Wolfgang," he said. "He certainly was one of my heroes."

In the early 90's, Mr. English tried to plug into the Hollywood machine that has been so integral to Mr. Puck's success. He was brought on board by Glenn Close, Michael J. Fox and Boston hockey legend Cam Neely to be the public face for a summer restaurant in Martha's Vineyard. Mr. English said the project was an unmitigated "disaster." "I was very young, and I got wooed by the whole celebrity thing," he said. "I jumped in without first finding out that there were some really serious problems." The restaurant quickly sank, and Mr. Neely threatened to sue. Although no legal action was ever taken, Mr. English is no longer talking to any of his former business partners.

Since that early fiasco, Mr. English's ascent has been pretty golden. Before his move to New York, he'd been shifting away from fine dining toward new concepts like his pizza chain or the Olives stores, where he hopes to sell jewelry, martini glasses, soap and fresh-pressed olive oil. He's also at work on a new program for the star-making Food Network. Many Boston chefs are envious-even bitter-about Mr. English's success, but only Mr. Neely, the disgruntled former business partner, was willing to take the chef down a notch. "Todd likes to look after the big three: me, myself and I," he said. "I don't respect the guy as a businessman. He's a great chef, but at the end of the day he's just a cook."

But in the age of Todd English, mere cooks are becoming a thing of the past, much as D.J.'s used to be guys who just played records in the dark. Ask any female diner-perhaps his true target audience. "I get lots of weird letters," said Mr. English as he sipped espresso and furrowed his thick brow. "My wife's not too happy about it. I've been proposed to; they send me pictures, rose petals. I think it's flattering, it's fun-it's part of the deal now."