TORONTO - Despite persistent rumours that Chelsea Handler is dating rapper 50 Cent, the late-night talk show insists the pair are just friends.
She also reveals she has a cute nickname for the burly recording artist.
"I call him 'girl,"' says the comical "Chelsea Lately" host, whose Los Angeles-based show can be seen across Canada when E! Entertainment Television re-launches here next week.
"I go, 'Hey, what's up, girl?' He likes it. He thinks I'm crazy.
"We have a cute relationship."
Gossip blogs have been buzzing lately after Handler, who brings her "Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang" standup tour to Toronto on Dec. 11, and 50 Cent were spotted hanging out together a few times.
Handler says they were just collaborating on a video that's gone viral on YouTube. In the clip, 50 Cent walks into the bedroom of teenage YouTube sensation Keenan Cahill and starts rapping with him to his new tune, "Down on Me."
"We're friends," said Handler of 50 Cent. "There's nothing else going on there."
It's a different story, however, for Handler and Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber, whom she met when she hosted the MTV Video Music Awards in August.
"I love Bieber and he loves me," she said in a phone interview from her office this week. "He's got a big, mad crush on me."
The irreverent, half-hour "Chelsea Lately" launched in 2007 and aired in Canada until last year, when the Canadian E! channel was sold by Canwest Global.
CTV will re-launch the celebrity-obsessed station here on Monday with a programming slate that also includes "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and "TMZ."
"Chelsea Lately" is heavy on satire as Handler and a panel of comedians, actors and staff members skewer celebrities and all things pop culture.
Handler is also known for her witty, straightforward approach to interviews in which she asks bold, hilarious questions other late-night hosts wouldn't dare touch.
Handler says she's often told by publicists not to ask certain things of the stars, "so you just try to skirt your way around them or think of creative ways to say it."
"You can't just like, blindside somebody, obviously, because they're never going to come back," said the Livingston, N.J., native, who recently came in at No. 33 on the Forbes list of 100 Most Powerful Women.
"I try to just have a fun interview regardless of whether they're revealing something unknown about themselves or not."
Handler adds that she's always respectful of the stars when they say certain topics are off-limits.
"My show's not that serious so I would never take it that far," she said.
"I mean, I'm sitting here looking at a four-foot-three little nugget midget named Chuy. He doesn't like the word midget. Ow! Sorry, he hit me."
Handler was referring to her assistant, Chuy Bravo, who was born Jesus Melgoza and was in the room with her.
"We share an office," she said. "Just kidding -- his office is underneath my desk."
Handler, who has also published three books, got her start in standup comedy at age 21, and once performed at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal.
The 35-year-old says the experience was "terrible."
"I had a bad experience. I bombed big time. It was right when I was starting out. It was a little premature."
On the "Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang" tour, which plays at Toronto's Massey Hall Dec. 11, she mines material from her recently published third book of the same name.
"It's just all about my personal life," she said.
"My family, people I can't stand: Russians, cats -- I don't like them -- whoever I'm dating, my friends that are annoying me, people who have babies that I think are annoying, all those kinds of things."
Besides her TV show and tour, Handler is also busy running a production company and was recently given her own imprint by her publisher.
The first book under the imprint, she said, will be written in the voice of her dog.
"It's about his life and what he perceives to go on here behind the scenes of 'Chelsea Lately,' and about the bunch of assholes that work around here."
