Las Vegas Weekly

February 10, 2009 · 4:02 PM

Photo Gallery: Zowie Bowie confirm move to the Palms; the pizza challenge

By Robin Leach

Robin Leach and Zowie Bowie. With drinks in hand, is it before or after the contest?!

Photo: SK+G

The gossip game is a brutal, take-no-prisoners battle between us friendly but warring scribes seeking those exciting exclusives. More often than not, a snappy PR person will put up a roadblock to prevent the news getting out anyway!

I competed in a charity pizza cooking challenge against dynamic song-and-dance duo Zowie Bowie, heavyweight comedian George Wallace and cast members of Jersey Boys, among others, at the opening of a Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza last week. That morning when I penned this column, I reported, “Zowie Bowie was on the move and departing their long-running shows at the Red Rock and Green Valley Resort casinos.” I knew they would be starting at George Maloof’s Palms in early March but wanted to get the official OK from the twosome themselves.

Before our pizza oven bakeoff, I quizzed them about the move closer to the Strip. They hemmed, hawed and wriggled, but I eventually got it out of them. Seconds later, their PR rep begged me to keep it secret until the Palms signed off on the contracts and announced it. He promised to let me know when I could run with it.

Wouldn’t you know he confirmed it via e-mail the following day at 12:18 p.m., saying, “I just got the OK to on the record to confirm the March 6 start date at the Palms -- and Station Casinos were given notice late yesterday!” The only problem is that a competitor had gotten the news into print at breakfast time! So I was scooped with my own exclusive, and thus will never agree to hold off to a PR rep again!

Photo: SK+G

Robin Leach with his pizza creation: smoked salmon, cream cheese and caviar.

Not only that, but the dazzling duo of Chris Phillips and Marley Taylor knocked me out of first place in the pizza contest! I’d gone to great lengths -- even getting in a training lesson by Wolfgang Puck’s local star chef Eric Klein -- for my smoked salmon, cream cheese and caviar creation. I even tried to bribe the six-person judging panel with champagne to go with my slices! Click HERE for our Katz Report on the contest. Even worse was my colleague Steve Freiss’s blog report about my creation, which he said neither looked like nor tasted like a pizza! The agony of defeat! The sting of criticism!

I was fighting to win so that our Keep Memory Alive charity would get the proceeds from all the sales of our winning celebrity pizza for February at the Sammy’s restaurants throughout the valley. But Zowie Bowie aced me on that! Let me tell you when you’re competing against a gorgeous blonde with stunning legs, a smashing smile and a generous display of pulchritude from a sexy white blouse, you simply don’t stand a chance. They won, I placed second, and I lost my scoop!

Photo: Kirvin Doak Communications

Erich Bergen, George Wallace and Jeff Leibow.

So now you know why I felt doubly bad! I’m not an easy man when it comes to double whammies. The only thing to get me through this double shellacking is the thought that on their opening night at the Palms, when they reprise that Dean Martin favorite about “the moon and a pizza pie,” Marley will smile sweetly at me and say, “This one’s for you, Robin!” Then I’ll have one that’s completely different for their PR guy!

Zowie Bowie’s winning “Vintage Vegas Pizza” was made up of mozzarella, Gorgonzola, pears, arugula, orange blossom honey and truffle oil and will be featured in all five Las Vegas Sammy’s locations through Feb. 28. All of the proceeds from their pizza will be donated to our favorite hometown charity, Opportunity Village, a not-for-profit organization that serves people with intellectual disabilities.

Don’t fret, folks! This was all in jest and good fun -- without even a trace of bitterness!

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