WNBC senior correspondent Gabe Pressman was toasted and roasted at his 90th birthday bash Saturday by a crowd including former mayor David Dinkins, NYPD boss Bill Bratton and his counterterrorism honcho John Miller and Rep. Charlie Rangel.
At Gabriel’s Bar & Restaurant on the Upper West Side, members of the New York Press Club Foundation’s parody group the Inner Circle serenaded Pressman by tweaking the lyric’s to Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” to “I Got You Gabe.”
Emcee Miller called Pressman “older than Moses,” and Pressman’s former intern, p.r. pro Lark-Marie Anton, lovingly joked, “The party is at Gabriel’s so Gabe wouldn’t forget where to show up. We wanted to keep things as simple as possible.”
But Pressman got the last laugh in front of Sue Simmons, Chuck Scarborough, David Ushery and Ray Kelly — who recalled that as his neighbor, Pressman used to complain to him about police sirens making too much noise near his home.
When Rangel arrived during Pressman’s speech, the veteran newsman called out, “Are you trying to steal my thunder, Rangel?”
He also joked that when he first worked with former anchor Miller, they couldn’t show Miller’s face on-camera because he looked 14 and it would have broken child labor laws.
“Not to mention they just preferred not to show his face.”