What a way to treat broadcast royalty.

Keith Olbermann was fired from Current TV after complaining that one of the peasants who drove his limo had the effrontery to try to talk to him.

And that another one smelled.

Suits at Al Gore’s fledgling cable network sacked the temperamental man-of-the-people after a series of on-the-job clashes, including the diva’s outrageous run of car services, network sources told The Post yesterday.

“Current went through eight different [limo] companies with Keith. Each and every time . . . he didn’t like them,” a network insider said.

“One time it was that the drivers talked to him, he did not like that the driver saw fit to speak to him. The other time he complained that the driver smelled.”

Olbermann couldn’t even be bothered to put pen to paper, in exchange for his luxury rides.

“He complained that he actually had to fill out the voucher — he refused to sign the voucher for the company to pay for the service,” the source said.

Another source — close to both Olbermann and the network — said it wasn’t quite that bad. He went through only three car services, not eight as the source insisted.

But the insider conceded that the moody “Countdown” host was hard to please when it came to his hired wheels, saying, “He’s finicky and most car services suck.”

In addition to the car-service fiasco, the sources said Current bosses had a laundry list of other beefs with their deposed host, including:

* Olbermann’s refusal to use the $250,000 set that he helped design. Then Olbermann complained about the simple black backdrop that he’d elected to use.

* Bosses said Olbermann did nothing to promote the network, its other hosts, or guest hosts.

* Executives were particularly miffed about Olbermann’s flaky work ethic, as he took vacation days on some the political world’s most important dates. Olbermann was a no-show on days leading up to the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary and even the day before Super Tuesday.

Current booted Olbermann on Friday after just 14 months on the job, and replaced him with former love gov Eliot Spitzer, himself a CNN refugee. Olbermann didn’t share the network’s “values of respect, openness, collegiality and loyalty to our viewers,” Gore’s company said in a statement.

Olbermann was in rare form on Twitter yesterday.

* To one follower who hit Olbermann on the eight-car-service issue, the lefty talker shot back: “How easy are you to fool? You believe everything you read online?”

* He accused Current of launching an ugly smear campaign: “Excuse me. They’re making up stories about me and drivers etc and I’M smearing them?”

* Olbermann said “good hunch” to a Twitter follower who wrote: “My hunch is Current banked on you to build their ratings, but they didn’t deliver on resources to upgrade your show.”

With additional reporting by David K. Li