Ray Romano Turns Journalist

By Stephen M. Silverman

09/24/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

First, it was Leonardo DiCaprio who got to play journalist when he interviewed President Clinton for Earth Day. Now, it's time for Ray Romano, who has a bylined article in the new issue of PEOPLE. Revealing what it was like to be a celebrity contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," the "Everybody Loves Raymond" star, 42, writes that he feared "looking like an idiot . . . What if I trip up at $100 because I don't know when the War of 1812 was?" He says that he prepared to face Regis Philbin's questions by "watching the Discovery Channel at night before I switched over to scrambled porn," and that his ultimate goal was to beat David Duchovny, "because he's supposedly the brain." The celebrity versions of "Millionaire" begin airing on Monday.