Kathie Lee Back With Regis

It's been five years since Kathie Lee Gifford and Regis Philbin came into viewers' homes each morning on their hit show. Now, she turns the table on her old pal.

Thursday night she is asking all the questions on "The Insider."

"The irony is, as he was saying, we had dinner three nights before that," Gifford tells The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler. "I had just produced a show, a musical that I had written. He came to see it along with Joy, and we had dinner before hand, and he came to the show. We saw each other socially pretty much the same as when we were working every day together."

But of course, with cameras around she says it is a different thing. So how was the taping of the interview?

"I think he was a little nervous," Gifford says jokingly. "We're very comfortable together. It was 15 years we worked together, every single day, through so many momentous events through our lives. I was single and childless when I joined Regis on what was a local show in New York at the time. So everything huge in my life, I went through with Regis — the highs and lows. And once you have a shared history like that with somebody, you know, it's something you treasure."

So what does she miss the most about working with Philbin?

"I don't miss working on that schedule on that show at all anymore, and I haven't since the first day I left," Gifford says. "I miss seeing him more often. We have a great friendship, and it means the world to me. We get to see each other, not regularly, but enough. It keeps us connected."

Gifford's next interview is with Kelly Ripa, now Philbin's side kick.

"Today, I leave from here and go to her set 'Faith & Hope,' " Gifford says. What people want from the interview is a "cat fight," Gifford says tongue-in-cheek.

"When I left that show, I left for all kind of personal and professional reasons and I was completely settled in my own heart about that," she says. "What I hoped for was somebody would get the job that Regis would love, that the audience would continue to love and it would be a great thing. That's exactly what happened. So there's never been any kind of animosity between the two of us at all."

Still, Ripa had big shoes to fill in. "Size 6. Are you kidding? She's doing great," Gifford says. "She owns the world. The first season she did 'Hope & Faith,' I was a guest star. We had great fun. We laughed. I'm sure it will be that way today.

"I get tired of all that writing about women can't get along, and women don't support each other, or wish each other well. Barbara Walters was incredibly important to my life when I first came to New York and mentored me. Other women have mentored me. That's an incredibly sexist thing to say. You don't hear men saying that about other men, and men are about as competitive as any species get."

"The Insider" and CBSNews.com are both units of Viacom.