New York Post gossip columnist extraordinaire Cindy Adams and I sat down in her “quintessential Manhattan pad” (as House and Garden once raved) for what was to be an interview about her lovable Yorkie terrier, Jazzy. The loyal pooch gave Cindy a new “leash” on life just after the loss of her beloved husband, comic Joey Adams, in 1999. She recently celebrated the release of her new doggy tale, The Gift of Jazzy and at the mere mention of her pint-sized precious pup’s name, Cindy takes on the glow of a woman in love.

Adams’ 10-room apartment, once owned by the tobacco heiress Doris Duke, was in the middle of renovations and our star, Jazzy, was running fashionably late (held up at one of his numerous celebrity play dates). Assured that he was on his way back with the car and driver, we relaxed in a corner of the den. The room drips with treasures of Southeast Asia and is topped off by a black leather ceiling, created for Duke by Valerian Rybar. As we waited patiently for the little man of the hour to arrive, we sipped tea and delighted in conversation that turned out to be an exclusive and intimate heart-to-heart with the Park Avenue gossip maven.

Joan Jedell: There was Joey, and then there was Jazzy. How did Jazzy come into your life?
Cindy Adams: Seven days after Joey left me, my two friends (Deborah Riffin, an actress, and her husband Michael Viner, a publisher) thought I needed something in my life so they decided unilaterally to send in a dog—they had three Yorkies at the time. They didn’t ask me. Michael sent a limousine to their breeder in Connecticut and this dog came—it was $475 just for the limousine. So I’m entertaining, because people were paying their respects. A lot of celebrities were in this house and Le Cirque was sending food and we were so busy! My housekeeper says, ‘I have to leave for a minute.’ And I say, ‘What do you mean? I’ve got 80 people here!’ She says, ‘I just have to go down to the lobby, they say there’s something I have to pick up, and they can’t send it up without me.’ So, I say, ‘well, just hurry up!’ She came back up, and brings me this thing. And I say, ‘Well? What is that?’ She says, ‘I don’t know but it has your name on it.’ I say, ‘Listen, put it in the kitchen, leave me alone, I can’t handle it right now.’ And so I went through the rest of the evening, and after everybody left, I had this thing. I didn’t know what to do with it! I hadn’t had a dog for all the years I was married because one had bitten Joey when he was a child, so he wasn’t ‘dog-friendly.’