LARRY KING: Tomorrow night! The whole hour! The cast of Hogan’s Heroes talks about the Holocaust! From Hilversum, Illinois! Hello!

CALLER: Hi, Larry. Hi, Mr. Madoff.

BERNARD MADOFF: Hi.

LARRY KING: Do you have a question for Bernie? Can I call you Bernie, by the way? I feel like I know you for some reason.

BERNARD MADOFF: Of course, Larry. I like to keep things casual.

LARRY KING: What’s your question, caller?

CALLER: I’d like to know if Mr. Madoff has any hot stock picks for the coming year.

LARRY KING: What about it, Bernie? Troubled times! Markets in an uproar! What’s hot? What’s not? Where do we put our money?

BERNARD MADOFF: Well, that’s sort of a difficult question for me to answer, Larry.

LARRY KING: The fraud thing! Yes. A monkey on your back!

BERNARD MADOFF: Yes, there’s that. I am still in the throes of a legal proceeding and am therefore enjoined from offering specific money-management advice.

LARRY KING: Does that hurt? Emotionally, I mean?

BERNARD MADOFF: Emotionally?

LARRY KING: Like telling Tiger Woods he can’t play golf?

BERNARD MADOFF: Honestly, Larry, it’s not really like Tiger Woods. See, Tiger actually plays golf. I mean in the sense that he goes to the course and hits the ball.

LARRY KING: Tiger Woods! Such a talented boy. A sports legend in the making!

BERNARD MADOFF: Right. But I didn’t really invest any of the money, in the sense of buying stocks and bonds and so forth. So I’m not the right person to ask about that.

LARRY KING: Got it. The man knows what he doesn’t know! Dance with the gal that brung ya!

BERNARD MADOFFf: I can offer, though, some general money-management advice, if you like. First, I’d try to keep as much in cash as possible.

LARRY KING: Money market, that sort of thing?

BERNARD MADOFF: No. Actual cash. I’d liquidate as much as you can and convert everything into cash. Banknotes. Go for the largest bills you can get from the bank. They have to honor your request for a large bill, though you’ll probably have to order it specially from the Fed in your area.

LARRY KING: Really? “News to me” department!

BERNARD MADOFF: And then when you’ve got your banknotes, the smart way to handle them is to start drinking.

LARRY KING: Drinking.

BERNARD MADOFF: Yeah. Whiskey, martinis, whatever will get you seriously impaired. And then when you’re still barely conscious, take your money and hide it around your house.

LARRY KING: Hide it?

BERNARD MADOFF: In books, in the attic, anywhere, really, that’s out of the way. At some point you’ll pass out –

LARRY KING: Careful on the stairs!

BERNARD MADOFF: Right. Right. And then the next morning you’ll have no real memory of what you did with the money, or where it is exactly.

LARRY KING: You can’t spend what you can’t find!

BERNARD MADOFF: So true. The trick is to never have a house fire and be extremely cautious when having a garage sale.

LARRY KING: Out-of-the-box thinking from money guru Bernard Madoff! This weekend! Shirley Jones and Marty Ingels demonstrate Erotic Yoga for the over-60 set! From Aberdeen, Maryland, hello!

CALLER: Hi Larry, hi Mr. Madoff. I was just wondering if you think the legal stuff you’re going through is going to hurt your chances at the Senate confirmation hearings.

LARRY KING: Great question! Bernie, what do you say to those folks who are talking in the news media about this? Do you say, “Hey, that’s behind me, I’m better, let me do what needs to be done at Treasury”?

BERNARD MADOFF: Larry, first it’s good to understand what actually happened at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. People keep saying I stole or embezzled, or whatever buzzword is fashionable right now. But that’s not true. I wasn’t in the investment business, per se. I was in the people business. People gave me money and I gave that money to other people and then went looking for new people to get money from to give it to the second group of people and so on and so forth.

LARRY KING: And then you ran out of money?

BERNARD MADOFF: No. Then I ran out of people.

LARRY KING: So what you needed was people?

BERNARD MADOFF: Larry, isn’t that what all of us need? More people? More people to care about and help and love?

LARRY KING: So true.

BERNARD MADOFF: You see, Larry, what I did, simply, was collect funds from certain individuals and distribute them to other individuals. And when you get right down to it, isn’t that what the federal government does?

LARRY KING: You make an excellent case.

BERNARD MADOFF: There’s no point in being modest. I am simply the most qualified person to run the American financial system. No one, Larry — and I mean no one — understands quite how to redistribute wealth as efficiently as I can. I’ve made $50 billion disappear without a trace, Larry. I’ll stack that record against any senator on the Banking Committee.

LARRY KING: Even Chris Dodd?

BERNARD MADOFF: Even Chris Dodd.

LARRY KING: Feisty words! Bernie Madoff! Fireworks to come! Up next! Liza Minnelli contacts the dead!