Next month Patti LaBelle steps into B’way’s “After Midnight” musical. Last time we talked in her hotel suite living room. It smelled like Le Cirque. She was cooking liver and onions.

“Girl, traveling I cook my butt off. Sauteed salmon, pasta, garlic snow peas. The other night okra, corn on the cob, shrimp with oregano, green pepper, fresh tomato. My Teflon pots are hidden. I carry my own kitchen. Hot plate, electric fry pan, two-burner stove.

“Room service is dinky. Not like down-home food. I’m a picky eater who hates throwing money away. I like to see my food. They send up s - - t and charge you $100. I cook fast. I eat chicken backstage during costume changes. Once I came out with chicken in my teeth. Listen, I cook better than I sing.

“I’m 70 this month and live a platinum life. Like the Soup Nazi, I’m opening sauces, marinades, 18 food products in 550 Walmarts. My new crab cake recipe ‘Patticake’ will be distributed all over the world.”

About the Broadway show . . .

“Can’t cook in the theater’s dressing room because no intermission. But they’re making me shmattes. High pumps. Lashes which stay on. Long acrylic nails which last three weeks. And my one suitcase is full of wigs.

“I do four songs. ‘Stormy Weather,’ ‘Minnie the Moocher,’ ‘Sunny Side of the Street,’ I forgot the other. I’m rehearsing at home. Problem is there are no cue cards on Broadway. And
Mr. Cuddles
, my Shih Tzu, goes wherever I go. He once heard my voice and got so excited he broke out and ran onstage.”

Saints march to West Virginia

NEW Orleans Saints. Heavyset muscular physically fit footballers who wilt in their hometown humidity. Run, throw, tackle, tumble, scrimmage and bang heads, but can’t do practice sessions in the Big Easy because summer’s a big problem. So where to? North. West Virginia. Greenbrier Hotel’s enormous grounds hold champion tennis and PGA golf tournaments. Three football fields are now being laid out. Two buildings, 150,000 square feet, are going up to house 130 bodies descending on White Sulphur Springs.

Somebody, cue the music: “When the Saints go marching in . . .”

Play politics

GOV. Rick Perry. Ambitions larger than his Texas. He wants to run for president? Please. He can’t even limp for president.

Sean Penn, Cory Booker, Chris Christie at “Champions of Jewish Values” gala. Perry arrives first. An American statesman said Israel may not be around in 10 years. I asked his comment. “I disagree.” No further comment. No more. Period.

Seeing TV, he hugs Rabbi Shmuley Boteach — with whom in Austin you know he shares enormous camaraderie. Smile fake as his values, Perry faced the camera.

Telling stories

David Wolkowsky, 94, lives on his own island off Key West, is hunting a NYC gallery to display his original paintings of Tennessee Williams, and gave a book party for Phyllis Rose’s “The Shelf,” where Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Molly Haskell, a Roosevelt, some Vanderbilts, Francine du Plessix Gray, told anecdotes about designer Charles James. Like living at the Chelsea Hotel on uppers, which may explain taking years to sometimes complete a dress. Like bringing Will Rogers’ daughter a trunkful of gowns. She bought none. Furious, he yelled: “It’s because your Vuitton bags are filled with empty Cutty Sark bottles.”

A small fix

Singer Jerry Vale is gone. A 1992 memory. Vale and Buddy Hackett cart a bridge table for an impromptu snack at Sinatra’s. They break off one leg.

Frank gasps. In the car they’d stashed a midget. They bring him in and prop him under it.

Q: Why’s it called “in the limelight?” A: In 1825, burning a cylinder of lime produced bright light. In Shubert Alley, “limelight” meant “center of attention.”

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.