Hugh Hefner explains trio-gamy on reality series

LOS ANGELES - Hugh Hefner doesn't really like to talk about the number of women he has been with in his life. Some things are, well, kind of private, even for the man who took sex out of the closet and helped drive it on the road to revolution.

"It's in the thousands, definitely," Hefner allowed during a recent telephone chat. He was promoting his new eight-episode reality series, "The Girls Next Door," which premieres in the US on E! entertainment network this week. "But I must say that because I'm a romantic, I tend to get involved in relationships. They may be multiple, but they go on for some time."

Yes, it's the hopeless romantic side of the man who built the Playboy empire that the man they call Hef hopes will be captured in his new unscripted extravaganza. The E! cameras were permitted access to the inner sanctum of the vaunted Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills to observe the dynamic among Hef and his three co-habitating leading ladies: Kendra Wilkinson, 20; Holly Madison, 25; and Bridget Marquardt, 31.

Hefner, 79, refusing to behave like a proper near-octogenarian thanks to the wonders of Viagra, boasts that he's had some 40 offers to participate in reality shows over the past couple of years but said yes only to this one because he trusted executive producer Kevin Burns.

"I've seen rough cuts of the first four (episodes), and it's beyond anything I anticipated," Hefner says. "It keeps the focus more on the girls and life here at the mansion. People have always wondered what life is like under this roof, and this really shows it. Kevin did an insightful, sensitive, creative job."

And what is it like having three live-in girlfriends young enough to be his granddaughters? Pretty damn sweet, thanks for asking. Hefner long ago stopped caring what anyone thought about the moral rectitude of his behavior even as he remains utterly obsessed with his own legacy (filling some 1,500 leather-bound scrapbooks about his life and history to date).

Indeed, it's fun to hear Hefner discuss how his current romantic arrangement happened quite accidentally, as if he were talking about stubbing a toe. He was coming out of his marriage to ex-wife Kimberly some eight years ago when he became enamored of the idea of concurrent multiple relationships. It started when he met a couple of sexy blond twins in Chicago at the same time he was dating a young lady named Brandy.

That was then.

"What we have now is really like any normal relationship times three," Hefner explains matter-of-factly. "It's like if you were single and dating three different women and instead of seeing each one on a different day of the week, you saw all three on the same day."

At the same time, the man who founded Playboy magazine in December 1953 maintains that there is honor in this four-way relationship. He remains exclusive to the three of them, for one thing, practicing something akin to trio-gamy. He also claims there are no jealousies, comparing the dynamic to a sorority sisterhood.

"The Girls Next Door" will apparently show that there is much more than scads of unbridled passion daily and nightly.

The real question here may be why Hefner would decide to take down the cloak on his life at the mansion, a palace rumored for years to have been a den of debauchery but that in truth has actually been a pretty tame estate the past, oh, 20 years or so at least. It wouldn't necessarily figure to serve Hefner to show that his digs are actually about as normal as can be expected considering it's populated by three beautiful young women and a sex Svengali.

"I've always said my life is an open book with illustrations," Hefner emphasizes. "There remains an ongoing fascination with me and my world, and the only reservation I'd ever had to doing this wasn't about exposing too much but fearing an intrusion. And the cameras haven't been intrusive at all."

If Hefner is worried about any snickering being done behind his back about this whole thing, he doesn't profess to concern himself much with it. He's always lived by his own rules and isn't about to start changing this close to his 80th birthday (which, by the way, comes in April).

"Life is very short, and I'm celebrating it the best way I can," Hefner says. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm the luckiest guy on the planet."

- REUTERS/HOLLYWOOD REPORTER