"Access Hollywood's" Billy Bush is launching his Westwood One "The Billy Bush Show" music and talk radio program this week — grateful his voice is back to 100 percent after a staph infection in his larynx that caused him strained vocal cords last fall, and worsened to the point he was off the air in February.

"I was just busting to get through a day, eating cough drops constantly," he recalls. "It's a nightmare for someone who uses his voice as much as I do."

Bush tried acupuncture, a healing session at church and, of course, doctors. "I finally met the right one. I heard about this doctor at the Harvard Medical Center who'd helped Dick Vitale, the basketball announcer," Bush recounts. "I took the red-eye to Boston see the guy, Dr. Steven Zeitels, and he made me do a test, and found out what it was." With a course of a particular antibiotic, the problem started to clear up in a matter of days.

Now Bush is rarin' to go as a radio host in addition to his TV job. He maintains, "It's not going to be a combative show. It's going to be a fun show. It will take what we do on TV further." However, "If I have an issue with someone, I will say so," he adds. "Like the Mary Hart thing earlier this year, when I had an issue with how they ("Entertainment Tonight") presented the Heath Ledger video with Heath in a roomful of drugs. It was incredibly exploitative. If someone had handed me that tape I'd have said, ‘No way,'" he insists. "Mary, how could you?"

With his shoot-from-the-lip style, the cousin of George W. Bush is used to having people angry at him, obviously. "If I feel I'm right, I don't have a problem with it," Billy says. "If someone comes after me and I see that I've done something wrong, I'll apologize."

SLAVES TO SEX: "Army Wives" regular Sally Pressman says playing the lead in the Lifetime Original Movie "Love Sick — Secrets of a Sex Addict" debuting Saturday (4/19) was "probably the most challenging thing I've ever done. It's a heartbreaking story based on an autobiography, and it's also a lot darker than anything I've ever done."

In "Love Sick" Pressman's plays a woman who "was sexually abused by her father starting at age 5 and as a result of that developed a sexual disorder. The author came to the set a couple of days, and I got to meet and talk to her, which was amazing. It's very embarrassing for the person. They feel very alone, can't tell anyone.

What was fascinating for me as an actor was that this woman is having a lot of sex, but hates herself more every time she does it."

Pressman says in reading the book on which the film is based and doing subsequent research she found sexual addiction to be a much misunderstood disorder. "Women who have this sexual disorder just basically get labeled as sluts, and that's not fair at all … It's an actual chemical imbalance that alters your body so it's something out of your control." She adds, "What I loved about working on the piece was it brings consciousness to people that sexual addiction happens far too often in the world, that it's not OK, and you can stop it and help yourself."

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: Marlee Matlin, who stars with Jeff Daniels in CBS's Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of "Sweet Nothing in My Ear" Sunday (4/20), is diplomatic in talking about the different sides of the debate over cochlear implants. And the Oscar-winning deaf actress is pleased that playwright Stephen Sachs "didn't take sides" on the matter either. "He looked at all sides of it. As for myself, I think that there are too many sides to the cochlear implant issue to take a stance either for or against them. In the end, it's up to the individual or the family to decide what's best for themselves or their child."

SERENDIPITY: Moviemaker C. Jay Cox wound up getting Tori Spelling to star in his "Kiss the Bride" film after, "I was flying back from Miami, and Tori and her husband Dean happened to be sitting behind me. I realized she'd be perfect for the character of Alex … Like her, she tends to start off being underestimated by people." Cox contacted Spelling the next day — not in flight. "I'm a little too shy for that, I guess. She came in, and I thought we were just going to do a general meeting, but she was all prepared and did a wonderful reading."

Tori's character is called upon to be something special, since she is the titular bride whose groom (James O'Shea) suddenly finds himself facing his high school love for the first time in years in the days preceding the planned wedding. The twist in Ty Lieberman's drawn-from-real-life screenplay: That love is male (Philipp Karner).

"We shot it in 18 days for a half million dollars," reports Cox, who had his distribution lined up early into the production. "Going in we were thinking, 'OK, we will make this movie for whatever we have to make it for. There's a reason wedding movies are usually big studio movies. Weddings are expensive! We soon realized we weren't just planning a movie shoot, we were planning a wedding. We ordered grip equipment, then picked out our color scheme and flowers." "Kiss the Bride" opens in limited release Friday (4/18).

With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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