Making Nice

Q: Now that you’re a New York disc jockey with a nationally syndicated radio show, “Wake Up With Whoopi,” what time do you get up?

A quarter to three.

What led you into radio?

It’s a medium I grew up with. When you think about the kinds of people who were on radio when I was a kid — Frankie Crocker and Dan Ingram and Cousin Brucie and Murray the K — these were the guys you carried everywhere you went. And introductions to new music came through D.J.’s.

Your show, which airs in the New York region on WKTU (103.5 FM), is taking shock radio in a new direction. Your goal is to shock by being nice.

We’re just trying to put something different out there that isn’t rude and that isn’t in your face and is just the kind of information you can take through the day. We talk about good manners on Mondays.

Your forthcoming children’s book, “Whoopi Goldberg’s Big Book of Manners,” also agitates on behalf of courtesy words like “please” and “thank you.” Isn’t that an easy cause? It’s not as if there are people who are against politeness.

There certainly are, because very few people are practicing it. I say, give people things they can work on, because they can’t stop Hezbollah and they can’t stop the war in Iraq. But they can say thank you.

Still, why would you become a good-manners czar, after earning your reputation as a comedian specializing in noisy and needling remarks?

When I am doing my characters on stage, that is the work I do. That is not a place to be polite. It is a performance. But I am a polite person in private.

Didn’t you lose your contract as a SlimFast spokeswoman after denigrating President Bush at a Kerry-Edwards fund-raiser?

That’s the press. I didn’t say what they said I said. Before I even left the stage that evening, it was on the A.P. wire that I had been vulgar and disgusting. It was terrible.

I would prefer your radio show if you dispensed with the dance music and made it 100 percent talk, which is definitely the highlight.

That’s the highlight for you. It isn’t the highlight for me. I like the breaks in between. I like being able to run downstairs and do what I want to do. I can go to the bathroom, I can call my kid.

You’re also a grandmother.

Three times.

Wasn’t your father a preacher? What is the connection between comedy and preaching?

I have no idea. I am not that deep.

You and Oprah Winfrey began your acting careers in “The Color Purple,” yet she failed to invite you to her recent Legends Ball to honor African-American women. Is there bad blood between you?

I don’t really know Oprah. I made a movie with her 20 years ago.

Have you ever seen her TV show?

No. I don’t think I have.

You’ve played gay and bisexual characters in various films, and some of your fans have raised the question of whether you are a lesbian.

No, I am not a lesbian. I describe myself as heterosexual. I think it is hard to have good relationships with anyone.

Are you living with someone these days?

Why? You got a man for me?

You were born Caryn Johnson. How did you wind up with the name Whoopi?

Here’s the thing. When you’re performing on stage, you never really have time to go into the bathroom and close the door. So if you get a little gassy, you’ve got to let it go. So people used to say to me, You are like a whoopee cushion. And that’s where the name came from.

If you find it rude to comb your hair in public, as you’ve said on your show, how can you possibly justify public acts of flatulence?

Is it bad manners if you say, I really have to cut this?

Never mind. Will your radio show be your main gig from here on in? It’s my everyday gig for the next three years. Unless they get mad at me and toss me out.