Entertainment

How Howard Stern’s driver became a radio star

The show will go on for Howard Stern — and his driver.

At the end of 2015, the shock jock struck a five-year deal with SiriusXM Satellite Radio, guaranteeing plenty more obscene antics, not just from Stern, but also from Ronnie Mund, Howard’s vitriolic chauffeur-turned-radio star.

Mund, a profane, gaudily tattooed Queens native, first began driving for Stern in ’86, when he was hired to take the shock jock to Connecticut for a meeting. It was supposed to be a one-off gig, but Stern took a liking to Mund and hired him as a full-time driver — and occasional on-air personality. Over the decades, Mund, 66, has grown into something of a cult figure with fans, he says, including Bradley Cooper, Jason Statham and Larry David. Last summer, he drove the pace car at a NASCAR race.

“He’s a superstar and an everyman who doesn’t hold back,” says “The Howard Stern Show” senior producer Jason Kaplan. “People love that. What other limo driver gets paid to emcee strip-club openings?”

Mund and Stern first met in 1986. Derek Storm/FilmMagic

Mund says he wasn’t looking to be a star. “I never wanted to be famous,” he tells The Post, while hanging out at the show’s Midtown headquarters. “I just wanted to drive Howard. Then [one day in the mid-’90s], I heard [late comedian] Sam Kinison on the show and didn’t like a prank he had pulled. I called the hotline and really got into it with Sam.”

Stern liked his chauffeur’s moxie and started putting him on-air. Mund has cultivated a knack for getting under people’s skin — like when he went after a writer on the show for getting hair implants and trying to hide them — and unleashing perverse proclamations and romantic advice. The divorced dad of two once told listeners that his secret for attracting women is Mambo cologne.

Recently, Stern came up with the idea of creating a nearly life-size cardboard replica of the sideburned, soul-patched, mustachioed Mund. A cross between Flat Stanley and your embarrassing uncle, it has popped up everywhere from a WWE match to a Backstreet Boys photo shoot.

“That was weird,” says Mund. “I got messages from girls who thought I had joined the band.”

On a show where humor derives from contentiousness, Mund comes across as the unfiltered, untrained on-air equivalent of a hockey enforcer. He takes his lumps, as long as he can inflict damage on others. When the creator of an app that judges attractiveness revealed Mund’s rating to be 0.0, the driver exploded in anger.

“I was legitimately pissed off,” he says. “It was not an act. It’s never an act.”

While Mund has no qualms about lashing out at Stern on-air — “I told him he drives like an old lady” — away from the mike he spouts compliments. “As a boss, Howard is great. You don’t have to do the deal of opening the door for him. He’s a regular guy.”

But Stern is still the boss. After a drunken Mund was loud and disorderly at a friend of the show’s wedding, Mund anticipated a razzing. “I picked up Howard, and he didn’t say a word,” recalls Mund. “Then he got on the air, and I got destroyed. I asked Howard why he didn’t discuss it beforehand. He said, ‘That’s not my job. I save everything for the air.’”