Anyone who thought shock jock Howard Stern’s radio show would lose steam once it made the leap to satellite radio hasn’t been listening lately. If you have been listening to his Sirius show, you have been witnessing the slow, uncomfortable breakdown of comedian/on-air sidekick Artie Lange. Lange, a portly stand-up comedian who replaced longtime sidekick Jackie Martling and has become a beloved figure on the show, has been gaining even more weight, blackout drinking and dabbling in drugs over the last year, to the point that his co-workers have expressed concern on-air. Lange’s downward spiral finally came to a head yesterday on the air, when he physically attacked his assistant and hurled various epithets at him, and then quit the show.

Stern was finally left speechless yesterday after a brawl erupted inside his Sirius Satellite studio between his hard-partying sidekick Artie Lange and Lange’s assistant, Teddy, which ended with Lange’s quitting the show.

The bickering started off air in the morning, in the hallway adjacent to Stern’s studio. Show staffers overheard Lange screaming at Teddy because Teddy asked him for his passport for the fourth time as he planned their flight to Amsterdam, which was set to take off last night. Lange told Teddy he should have photocopied the passport the first time.

Stern was told they had been bickering and brought it up on air. When Teddy came in to defend himself, Lange snapped.

“He’s a loser,” yelled Lange. “He’s the most unorganized assistant. I want to fire him, but he has no money. I hope he dies of AIDS.”

Lange, who pays Teddy $24,000 a year for part-time work, then accused Teddy of embarrassing him in front of friends last week in LA when he called Bloomingdale’s department store by its nickname, Bloomie’s, and announced the store didn’t have something in Lange’s size.

“I think I hired a fag,” said Lange. “I wanted to throw him out the window.”

Lange then threw a cup of water at Teddy and lunged at him, throwing a punch that didn’t land. Show writer Benjy Bronk jumped on Lange and held him back, while Ronnie “The Limo Driver” Mund burst in to get Teddy out of the studio.

Lange blamed Stern for the fight, saying that Stern “pushed” him to the breaking point and that he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t snap again in the future. He then told Stern he loved him and resigned.

“Don’t ever mention Bloomie’s around the guy,” Stern sighed.

One show insider says that the staff loves Lange and is “extremely upset” but that it’s out of Stern’s hands and that Sirius management will soon decide Lange’s fate. The show is on a break next week.

Both Lange and Teddy failed to return calls for comment. Lange was last spotted by a fan at the Brooklyn Diner on West 57th, drowning his sorrows in a plate of food.

[From Page Six]

It’s a shame that Lange is at such a low point that he feels the need to lash out both physically and verbally at someone “smaller” than him. The poor kid is making what equates to less than minimum wage and doesn’t deserve to be called names and attacked. Hopefully, Lange will check himself into rehab, look back on this and realize that this was his “rock bottom” moment. Stern, for his part, was extremely upset at the end of the broadcast and tried to defuse the situation, asking Artie to go cool off and then come back to work tomorrow, but it was too late.

Update by Celebitchy: Here’s the audio clip, which was initially blocked by Sirius through a cease and desist they sent out. Sirius has since issued the OK to publish it. Thanks to Rowdy on Redlasso for this clip.

Artie Lang is shown at “Artie Lang’s Beer League” premiere on 9/16/06, thanks to PRPhotos.

On Sunday Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, their son Alexander Pete Schreiber, who will be four weeks old on Wednesday, and their nanny went out for lunch at Malibu restaurant Taverna Tony’s. They looked kind of annoyed going into the restaurant, but then at some point before they left Liev came out by himself and went off on the paparazzi, chasing one guy to his car and hitting it. Naomi then came out and tried to calm Liev down. It seems like word got around that Liev and Naomi were there with their newborn son and the photographers started gathering outside while they were eating, annoying Liev, who is probably sleep deprived and at the end of his rope. It’s hard enough to go out with a new baby without having to deal with hoards of paparazzi.

The cops were called to try and stave off the photographers, but because it was a public street there was nothing they could do. As they left Naomi and Liev looked super annoyed and Naomi even flipped off photographers. Here are the descriptions of the photo sets from Splash News:

Naomi Watts and boyfriend Liev Schreiber arrive at Taverna Tony’s Restaurant in Malibu with new baby Alexander Pete in tow. Liev seems to be finished with giving the paparazzi shots of the baby as he went ballistic, chasing and assaulting the photographers. Naomi had to come out of the restaurant to retrieve Liev and stop him from his rampage.

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Liev Schreiber, fiance of Naomi Watts, loses his cool as photographers take pictures of him and his family on a busy Malibu street. The actor raced into the middle of the road, hit a photographer’s car and chased one snapper away. The new Dad had arrived at popular restaurant Taverna Tony’s with his new son and Naomi before chasing the media away. The police were later called but could not help Schreiber as the snappers were on a public street.

We went out for sushi with my son when he was four weeks old. Newborns sleep a lot and we had a window of maybe an hour when we could enjoy our meal. Then my son woke up and we had to get out of there and make sure he was fed and happy. It was stressful in that we kept worrying that he would wake up and we would have to leave. We didn’t have anyone with us to help out, though.

This was probably the first time Liev and Naomi have been out with their son for dinner and you can see how Liev would get annoyed. Maybe they feel like prisoners in their beautiful home considering how much photographers must stalk them. You can tell they weren’t expecting it either, because they’re not dressed up or anything.

Still, Liev should work on his temper and on coming up with ways to foil photographers, like using decoy cars or driving farther out of town. If you’re a celebrity and you want to live near Hollywood, and go out to eat or shop there you can forget about having any kind of privacy, especially when you have a beautiful new baby.

Naomi was also seen out earlier on Sunday strolling along the beach with friends in Malibu, where she attended a small get together at Jon Favreau’s beach house. It’s unknown if Liev or little Alexander were there with her as there are no pictures of them.

Thanks to WENN and to Splash News for these pictures.

Let me just let you know right now that there is not yet video online that I could find of this incident. I looked on just about every online video sharing service I could find. Some douche even put the keywords Branson and Colbert together on YouTube, but it’s not this video. Anyway maybe Branson just didn’t get Colbert’s truthiness, or maybe he’s just a dick, but Colbert didn’t let him plug one of his new low-cost airline services in an appearance on his show and Branson got pissed and threw water on him. Colbert asked for some water, sat there and waited, and when someone delivered it he reciprocated by dousing Branson.

I guess Branson even named a plane after Colbert, so that could be one of the reasons he took it so personally. Please let there be video of this soon:

I haven’t posted a recap anywhere else, but I’ll spill it here first. Branson was apparently upset that he wasn’t able to give a direct plug to the new Virgin service and doused Colbert with his guest mug of water. Stephen was DRENCHED. He took a beat, then signalled for his own “ammunition” for about twenty seconds until Alison (Silverman) ran and gave him her bottle of water, and Stephen retaliated. The two of them sat for a VERY uncomfortable second looking like two wet cats. Then Stephen thanked him for coming. I really don’t think it was planned, since Stephen had another bit to introduce (the American Samoa Better Know a Protectorate) and a full interview left to do. They had to get him a new jacket and even broke out a blowdryer. Everyone in the crew had a “WTF?” reaction.

[NoFactZone via MediaBistro and Daily Mail]

And the original commentor who was in the audience clarified what happened, and this is said to be confirmed by other sources:

I forget what the “trigger” was exactly. Let me back up a bit and say that for the first part of the interview Stephen tried to get Branson to sign an IOU for $1 million. Branson was trying to squirm out of signing it. He made the big mistake of trying to appeal to the audience, like “Do you think someone like him really needs a million dollars?”, which made the crowd go BERSERK. Apparently, he was unaware that you don’t try to turn the Nation against Stephen.

I didn’t catch all of what he was saying before the water throw, but it was something along the lines of how he’d been sitting there all that time and didn’t get the chance to say why he was on the show, which confused us and Stephen a little, because it was pretty clear from the top that he was hawking Air Colbert as part of Virgin’s new American service.

[From No Fact Zone]

The Daily Mail, where I originally heard this news, says that the episode was going to be retaped, which kind of made me lose hope of ever seeing it. But it turns out that Comedy Central is going to air it after all, and that they know ratings gold when they see it. It’s going to air Wednesday, August 22.

Branson’s people have changed their tune about the incident. In the statement they gave to The Daily Mail they seemed to indicate that Branson was pissed. His rep said, “Richard did throw his water over Stephen. As most people know, Richard can be unpredictable.” But in their statement to MediaBistro they turned it into something comical, which it doesn’t sound like it was, “The segment was never intended to air live. Richard enjoyed his time with Stephen, and the splash was part of the fun.”

Richard Branson is worth $7.8 billion USD, according to Wikipedia. He owns all the Virgin airlines, Megastores, and the Virgin record label. I saw him on that short-lived Fox reality show that was supposed to compete with The Apprentice, The Rebel Billionaire, in 2004 and I honestly thought he was a decent guy. He came off as 90% less of a dick than Trump does on an average episode.