"Anyone who's seen me with my shirt off knows I love to eat," Jimmy Kimmel once remarked. "I grew up in Las Vegas, home of the $1.99 steak dinner and all-you-can-eat buffet. My Italian grandmother (imagine a beardless Pavarotti) cooked sauce in a pot so big she could have stirred it with an oar.

"I once squeezed a whole bottle of mustard into my mouth for $5. I chugged a bottle of Tobasco sauce for $10. I ate a piece of bacon which had been nailed to the wall of my office for a year (yes, 365-day-old bacon), not as a wager, but as a matter of pride."