James Lipton 'not ashamed' of being a pimp

Ann Oldenburg | USA TODAY

James Lipton's Inside the Actors Studio celebrated its 250th episode on Wednesday night with a two-hour special. Fans and special guests recalled their favorite moments.

Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lopez, Christopher Walken, Barbara Walters, Dave Chappelle, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Ellen Burstyn, and Spike Lee were among those featured on the show.

But Lipton has been the one making news this week.

The host, 86, revealed in an interview with Paradethat he was a pimp in Paris in the 1950s. "It was only a few years after the war," he says. "Paris was different then, still poor. Men couldn't get jobs and, in the male chauvinist Paris of that time, the women couldn't get work at all. It was perfectly respectable for them to go into le milieu."

On CBS This Morning today he explained how it happened.

"I don't believe in buying sex," he said. "I think that if you haven't earned a sexual adventure, you don't deserve it. I believe that to this day. So, no no no … I didn't want sex. My Parisian friend, he was much more casual about it. Then two beautiful women approached us and said would you like to see two women make love? I said, I certainly would."

One of the women, Regine, became one of Lipton's close pals. "It was platonic. Anything else would have spoiled that. I certainly wasn't going to pay her. And she certainly wasn't going to give it to me for free because that would have been my exploiting her ... sexually. So we were stuck ... but we liked each other."

However, he needed to earn a living. "One night I went back there and said I have to go back to America. And she said why, and I said oh, I just have to go back. And she said, you're broke, aren't ya? And I said yes. And she said, the problem is solved. You're going to be my mec."

Mec, short for Mackrel, explained CBS This Morning anchor Charlie Rose, is what some would call a pimp, but Lipton says, "A pimp exploits and abuses the women who work for him." That wasn't what Lipton did. He was "a procurer," he says. "An agent, so to speak."

His job was to ask tourists if they "would like a personal tour ... a sexual exhibition."

And, he says, "I did a roaring business!"

Lipton also defends it, saying, "I'm not ashamed of it. She was my friend. I was of help to her. And we had some amazing adventures."