Kathy Griffin dishes the juicy stuff about the stars, including herself.

"I'm banned from 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show,' which makes me sad, because I'm a real admirer of hers," says Griffin. "But apparently the show said, 'Well, we can't have you talking trash about celebrities, and our audience is friendlier than that.' "

The fortysomething comedian is fully aware that she steps on a lot of big-name toes. But she can't stop herself, not when the material is so ripe for mocking.

"I am fascinated by how celebrities, by and large, don't have a good sense of humor about themselves, and yet they're so ridiculous," she says, taking a phone break a few hours before a performance in Atlantic City, N.J.

Griffin's approach is to say out loud what everyone else is secretly thinking.

Her take on Britney Spears: "Where's the parenting in that household? Because somebody's got to be there when Britney drops the kid on the head."

And on Tom Cruise: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was he always crazy and Pat Kingsley kept a lid on it, or did he just turn crazy?"

She's currently starring in the second season of her Bravo reality show, "My Life on the D-List," which includes footage of her trip to entertain the troops in Iraq. The same network also recently aired her concert special, "Kathy Griffin: Strong Black Woman," which contains riffs on her misadventures with the E! channel and Celine Dion.

Griffin's early standup routines tended to focus on topics like dating, those familiar stories of hookups and being dumped that are comedy staples. But after being hired as a co-star on NBC's "Suddenly Susan," she homed in on the star-skewering material that defines her comic voice.

"All of a sudden, I'm working with Brooke Shields every day, and I'm going to Andre Agassi's house and I'm presenting on an awards show and then I'm hosting an awards show," she recalls. "And you get to see all that backstage stuff. I was sort of immersed in the world of celebrity and never knew that celebrities were so ridiculous until I saw for myself."

In one of the funniest bits from "Strong Black Woman," she talks about being booted from the E! channel's red carpet team after joking that child star Dakota Fanning was in rehab, an absurd gag meant to poke fun at how stars send "messages of hope" to troubled colleagues. As she recounts to the audience, she told the worried cable network afterward, "OK, here's my apology. You'd have to be a (bleeping) idiot to not know I was kidding."

That gutsy attitude endears her to her fan base, which includes a devoted following of gay men.

The new season of "My Life on the D-List" covers lots of territory: the death of Griffin's dog, her quest to auction off a weekend at her house for charity, her visit to Iraq, her wine-in-a-box-loving parents, and, very discreetly, her marital woes. Her divorce from software consultant Matt Moline was finalized in May.

Griffin says she's reconciled with Moline.

"I will tell you, season two, we reconcile, then we don't really deal with it. What I mean is, I hope Bravo isn't, like, telling you guys it's 'Breaking Bonaduce,' or you're going to see us in couples therapy or anything like that. Honestly, when you see season two, you're not going to notice any difference."