Alfred Joseph Benza is an American gossip columnist and television host. Early life Benza was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York City, though he moved with his family to West Islip, New York on Long Island shortly after his birth. He has two sisters, Rosalie and Lorraine. After graduating from West Islip High School in 1980, Benza majored in journalism at C.W. Post College on Long Island. Career During college Benza began writing for Newsday and was soon hired full-time as a gossip columnist for that paper and eventually for the New York Daily News. It was as a gossip columnist that he began appearing on E! Entertainment Television's The Gossip Show in the mid-1990s. This led to appearances on talk shows such as Geraldo, Hard Copy, The Montel Williams Show, The Maury Povich Show, and various other television talk shows. He was later fired from the New York Daily News by editor Pete Hamill. Relationship with E! Soon after leaving the paper, Benza was offered a job hosting Mysteries and Scandals, a program detailing true crimes and scandals involving celebrities, which necessitated a move to Los Angeles. It was on this show that Benza popularized the catchphrase "Fame, ain't it a bitch," which later became the title of his autobiography. The show ran for three seasons between 1998 and 2000. In 2001, Benza had a short-lived late-night E! talk show known as A. J. After Hours; it was cancelled after low viewership and critical disdain. In the same year during an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Benza punched Stern staffer "Stuttering John" Melendez in the face, alleging Melendez was screening out positive listener calls about him. Melendez then made a prank call making fun of the failure of After Hours, provoking Benza further. The incident resulted in a temporary ban for Benza from Stern's show direct from WXRK general manager Tom Chiusano. He appeared again in October 2004. In 2002, he starred in P.S. Your Cat is Dead!, a comedy film, starring and directed by Steve Guttenberg. Recent appearances In 2006, Benza hosted the reality show Cold Turkey II on ION Television. He appeared as a co-host on the first five seasons of High Stakes Poker (along with Gabe Kaplan) on the GSN. He was replaced by poker pro Kara Scott for the show's sixth season. He wrote an open letter expressing his discontent with network executives at