It’s a strange world we live in when TV chat show queen Oprah Winfrey seems almost quaint.

Let’s face it – in this CCTV-addled, happy-slapped era of multi-channel madness, things have developed far beyond anything the Winster could have imagined. Whether its the sheer shock value of Jerry Springer, the utter surrealist mind-breaking of Martha Stewart (whose guestlist has included ‘an award-winning pig’) or the can’t-turn-away/point-and-laugh hilarity of new hecklerspray favourite The Jeremy Kyle Show, poor old Oprah has found her marketplace swamped by legions of more extreme alternatives.

Of course, things weren’t always like this. Oprah used to have her fair share of bizarre happenings too. Like that time in 1988 when she decided to stop eating food.

A decision which she only now says she "regrets".

Talking of her nigh-on insane foray with a ‘liquid-protein-only’ diet, Oprah Winfrey (DVDs) remarked:

"I had literally starved myself for four months – not a morsel of food – to get into that pair of size 10 Calvin Klein jeans.’

In a 1988 televised event which must have had her trailer park audience rubbing their eyes with disbelief – inbetween having sex with their relatives – the show in question began with Oprah:

‘dressed in skinny jeans and a long-sleeve dark top, wheeling a wagon loaded with fat onto the set to represent her 67-pound weight loss’.

hecklerspray has to admit we don’t really remember this – we were far too busy watching Knightmare and trying to avoid doing our homework.

Oprah, however – now celebrating twenty whole years of televisual babysitting – has now revealed that she believes the stunt to be her "biggest, fattest mistake."

Other than inspiring Vanessa Feltz, surely?

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Oprah Regrets Her 1988 Liquid Diet - AP Wire

[story by C J Davies]