'The Host's Leaderboard': Tom Bergeron on American Week, drinking, and his beefy Twitter pic

We’ve got a liiiiiiive one, DANCMSTRs! I caught Tom just before the party he throws every season for the Dancing With the Stars staff. He’ll have you know he did not plan to get rowdy enough to do something crazy — like, oh, I don’t know, wear leather pants. “My liver, I can hear it whimpering,” he laments.

Our week 5 chat is chock full o’ gems! Press play on the audio player below to hear it.

• On Cheryl Burke: “I’m like her surrogate dad and she’s like my bad daughter — ‘let’s get dad drunk, that’d be cool!'”
• On Maks’ Tuesday night soliloquy: “I don’t think you should eat your own sex stick.”
• What attracted him to the idea of hosting DWTS way back when he’d only seen a DVD of the British version: “The judges, the spray tanning, the kitschy elements — I love that. For me to work on live TV and not feel comfortable poking a little affectionate fun at the proceedings, that would be difficult.”
• The reasoning behind Tom’s beefy new Twitter profile picture, taken during Ryan Seacrest’s radio show. “His staff was giving him a hard time, saying ‘Tom’s more cut than you are.'” I should say so!
• Tom tells a story about a past party, “when I’d had 3 to 6 too many.” I love the last-minute numerical modification!

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Press play on the little triangle above to hear Our Host in all his American (Week) glory.

More on ‘Dancing With the Stars’:

‘DWTS’: Your Hidden Gems of the Week!

‘DWTS’: What should Pia Toscano sing?

All of Annie’s ‘DWTS’ episode recaps