"I'm 55 years old and I have no lines in my forehead," Gifford says. "What do I do? Iron it every morning? You think people don't know I use Botox?" Her frenetic chattiness is simultaneously welcoming and bewildering. You can't keep her on a subject, any subject—she laughs, sheds a tear for her departed father, and then starts shamelessly flirting like a retired cheerleader speedballing martinis and Phentermine. "I don't want to know about anyone's sex life," she says. "I'm barely interested in my own sex life. Although I'm interested in your sex life. I want to know."

She gives me that Gifford head tilt, the rascally eyes. "But it's not all six orgasms a day anymore," she says. "I'm down to four. Okay, I'm down to two."

Gifford is an unlikely object of my, or anyone's, desire. She's middle-aged, a self-described washed-up Goody Two-Shoes, a serial name-dropper (mainly those of her husband, former football star Frank Gifford, and her kids, Cody and Cassidy), and was allegedly linked to sweatshops. By now she should have been banished to the realm of infomercials, squealing and giggling as she hawks cut-rate jewelry that can be yours for a dozen easy payments. We should be done with her. But we're not: Men who would normally have eyes only for women 30 years Gifford's junior, whose fantasies should be confined to the realm of the Scarletts, the Jessicas, and the Siennas, men who don't watch daytime TV, find themselves thinking Gifford's, well, hot.

Kathie Lee shows off her Wine Rack on the Today show.

Since reemerging six months ago as the cohost, along with Hoda Kotb, of the new fourth hour of the Today show, Gifford has become the unlikely vehicle of a brand extension: She's become daytime television's leading comedic cougar, on a show that's aimed at stay-at-home moms but should be on your TiVo menu. More than that, she's the Botox depository most likely to make you spit out your latte as she careers through her bawdy but dead-on takes on current events and celebrity gossip. Among the ranks of menopausal and postmenopausal women who opine at us daily from their sofas, Gifford has materialized as the funniest. While the View gals, Oprah, Ellen, and fellow Today host Meredith Vieira will occasionally surprise you with unpopular opinions, Gifford ventures into truly un-PC territory. She'll pull up her shirt to show off her rack, joke about her crabs, comment that she finds a doll widely viewed as racist "cute," cut off guests mid-sentence (as she famously did with show regular Sam the Cooking Guy, a clip of which has been viewed a million times on YouTube)—all in a way that is both brassy and boozy, a cross between Mae West and Mrs. Robinson. She revels in the role of the smoky older woman for whom cocktail hour can't come soon enough. In the age of YouTube, celebrity reality shows, and Fox News, a middle-aged presenter on a network morning show is the most entertaining and provocative woman on TV.

"We're aware that we ain't in church," she says. "I've suggested to our producers that we have a crawl beneath the screen that says KATHIE LEE GIFFORD WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE FOR WHAT SHE JUST SAID, FOR WHAT SHE IS SAYING, AND FOR WHAT SHE IS ABOUT TO SAY. 'Cause I know that I'm kidding and flirting and having fun."

Eight years ago, her previous television persona—that of a prim Stepford wife alongside Regis Philbin's avuncular showbiz veteran on the long-running Live With Regis and Kathie Lee—was far less sympathetic. Wearing neutral-colored pantsuits and a pasted-on smile, she came across like an ADD-afflicted flight attendant. It was too easy to hate the cute, perky blonde. When her business and familial woes became tabloid fodder—accusations that her licensed clothing line was being manufactured in sweatshops were followed by news of a hotel tryst involving Frank and another woman—it seemed like payback for all the public boasting she had done about her wonderful family life.

Sam the Cooking Guy tries to put a stop to Kathie Lee's interruptions.

She left Live With Regis and Kathie Lee in 2000 to pursue a singing career and work in musical theater, which is what she was doing when she returned to TV for a guest spot on Today in November 2007. "She came on and just jumped right into it," recalls executive producer Jim Bell. He went over to the Giffords' Greenwich, Connecticut, estate and made the deal to get her back on the air.

This particular morning, Gifford and Kotb run through a dozen topics of the day, including a story about a woman who is suing her husband for giving her an STD. "You gotta get something out of a marriage," Gifford says, "but how is she going to get any dates?" She goes on to speculate on the air that James Woods has gotten a Brazilian wax—a deeply disturbing image—before she hits the floor in that cocktail dress and those heels to do some yoga, adjusting her cleavage first and saying "Make sure the puppies are in." She has the crew cracking up constantly, and has reduced her cohost's role to that of straight woman—Kotb keeps the show on track like an Egyptian-American Bud Abbot. Gifford makes frequent references to being geriatric, squinting and talking about her one good eye. Later, when I mention that she is menopausal, she interrupts me.

"Menopausal? Honey, I am postmenopausal. Don't flatter me."

Gifford manages to be both vixen and (almost) senior citizen, flirt and Boniva guzzler. "Here there are no pretensions about Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Here it's like I say what comes to my mind," she says. "I do the crazy things—I know what's going to work on-camera. We're not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but we might be your glass of champagne or, in my case, Chardonnay."

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