SHOW: THE MONTEL WILLIAMS SHOW 12:00 AM EST
DATE: September 3, 2008 Wednesday
TITLE: CELEBRATING 17 YEARS: SYLVIA'S FAREWELL
ANCHORS: MONTEL WILLIAMS
LENGTH: 7135 words
MONTEL WILLIAMS (HOST): It's finale week and it's Wednesday, so it must be farewell to Sylvia Browne. She's been a friend to this show and to myself for the last seventeen years and, every time she's here, the audience goes crazy. Before we get together with Sylvia on stage, we're gonna go deep into the vault and show you some of her most unforgettable appearances. Our farewell to Sylvia Browne finale week continues right now.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
WILLIAMS: Welcome, welcome and thanks so much for joining us today. You know, this week we're celebrating our seventeen years of the Montel Williams Show as we prepare for our grand finale on Friday. People always come up to me and ask me, "Montel, who was your favorite guest?" I got to tell you, we've had one guest that's been with us since really almost day one. She is the longest-running guest in daytime television and she's been on the set since 1991. You know who I'm talking about. I'm talking about world-renowned psychic, Sylvia Browne. You got to take a look at her first appearance on the show.
BEGIN VIDEO CLIP
WILLIAMS: Please welcome my very special guest, Sylvia Browne.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
WILLIAMS: How long have you been doing this, Sylvia?
SYLVIA BROWNE: Thirty-nine years.
WILLIAMS: Thirty-nine years. And when did you first realize that you were psychic?
BROWNE: They say when I was three, but when I first began to realize it was when I was five.
WILLIAMS: Five. I mean, what was the first realization to yourself?
BROWNE: I told my mother that my father was having an affair.
LAUGHTER
BROWNE: We all want to know the same things. How am I gonna do in life?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is there a Mr. Right coming into my life?
...
END VIDEO CLIP
WILLIAMS: You know, over the years, thousands of people have come to our studio to ask Sylvia Browne questions about their own lives, but today you're gonna get an opportunity to find out about Sylvia's life.
BEGIN VIDEO CLIP
BROWNE: I grew up in a middle class family in Kansas City, Missouri. At three years old, they told me that I knew who was coming, who was going to ring the phone. At five, I was sitting on the couch facing two of my great-grandmothers. In my family, we lived to be so old. And I saw their faces run, which scared me to death. Not knowing at the time until my maternal grandmother, thank God I had her, who was a psychic, said, "That means that they're going to pass over to God's house", is how she put it, and within two weeks both of them were dead. That wasn't exactly a great way to be introduced to my ability.
...
BROWNE: All the reports, I can show them to you, came back and said, "Sylvia's very normal. She's very outgoing. She doesn't need a secondary personality, but she has something very paranormal happening." At 71 years of age, doing it for 53 years professionally, if I didn't have passion for it, I would be dead by now. I really, really love it. I mean, everybody that knows me, seen me in concert or heard me on the phone, I've never lost my enthusiasm. When that day comes, I'll stop.
END VIDEO CLIP
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BROWNE: Yes. But the main thing I do want to say is I can never ever thank you enough not only for letting me on this show, but more important that most of you don't know, is being my friend.
WILLIAMS: Oh, absolutely, Sylvia.
APPLAUSE
BROWNE: No, no, listen to me. He has been my friend through divorces, through problems with my children, through illness. We've been together through everything and I wouldn't trade one inch of his fingernails for most of the people I know, because he's just that good a person.
APPLAUSE
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WILLIAMS: And because I'm stopping production of the show. As we're taping right this minute, this will be the last audience that you and I do together as the Montel Williams Show.
BROWNE: Yes.
WILLIAMS: And, guys, you don't get this. This has been seventeen years.
...
WILLIAMS: I'm gonna tell you, there's not another show on air that has had a guest come on over this length of time that's been invited into your house and into your living rooms for this long on television. There's never been a guest like this. I would defy you. Dr. Phil probably did three years with Oprah before he launched his own show. That was a regular reoccurring guest.
WILLIAMS: But Sylvia Browne has been here and has been invited into your rooms over the period of time when we had you for maybe, I don't know, it was only three or four weeks out of the year and people were demanding more Sylvia. So we started giving you more Sylvia and, I'm gonna tell you, I've had people walk up to me for the last few months since the announcement made and said, "There's gonna be a void when you leave, but I have no idea what I'm gonna do without Sylvia."
...
WILLIAMS: Well, you know what? Because I know that I don't have to go without you, I don't have to wonder what I'm gonna do when the show's over, because and I will be in as much contact as we've always been.
BROWNE: Oh, I'd hang on to your pants leg if I had to.
LAUGHTER
...
