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A tight-lipped Teri Hatcher appears to be suffering from a case of buyer's remorse since her face-sucking demo with American Idol boy-masseur/waste of 21 million E! dollars Ryan Seacrest. We just wish Hatcher would follow her heart, naysayers be damned: As far as we're concerned, the fact that he used to be an Oprah Winfrey Show-addicted nacho glutton only makes him cuter.

"I was overweight," he confesses, "because I used to come home and eat a cookie sheet pan of nachos and watch OPRAH every day of my life."

He tells People he was taunted by schoolmates who called him "Kubiak" after the bulky character on the TV series "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," and says he dreaded going to the beach because he had to take his shirt off and display his flabby mid-section.

"I remember that feeling and I think that drives me now to run and work out because I don't want to be back in that place again," the new host of radio's "American Top 40" says.

Such is the magic of the Hollywood dream machine, where one can shoot to the top after inauspicious beginnings as 180 pounds of couch-bound flab gorging on melted cheese and jalapeno slices and seeking unreciprocated, daily solace in Oprah's lunchlady arms. Advantage, Cowell: We look forward to Simon's inaugural "Coughcoughlardass!" on tonight's Idol results show.

[Photo Illustration: The Velvet Hot Tub]