Lock up those “Late Show” lady interns — David Letterman is on the loose!
A Connecticut university professor yesterday vowed to “be more attentive” about placing interns with Letterman’s “Late Show” because of the randy host’s bombshell confession that he had slept with multiple female show staffers.
“I think I’d be remiss in just trying to ignore this,” Quinnipiac University Professor Grace Levine told the college’s newspaper, the Quad News.
“What’s unusual is what’s in the news regarding this scandal, and it heightens my concern,” said Levine, director of the communications internship program at Quinnipiac.
Saying she had made no decision about discouraging Quinnipiac coeds from interning on the show, Levine said, “The only change is my awareness of what’s gone on there.”
Several Quinnipiac students have interned on the “Late Show” in past years.
Ashley Wigfield, a 2008 Quinnipiac grad, is quoted in the school’s online internship brochure as saying that while working for Letterman, “I was exposed to every possible area in the field of television . . . It was here that I gained the confidence and work ethic needed to succeed.”
A “Late Show” source said that the show — which carries a complement of 11 interns each semester — has no current Quinnipiac student as an intern and that no one from the school is scheduled to be an intern next semester.
Letterman stunned his audience two weeks ago by disclosing his workplace frolics with female underlings.
He said he had become the victim of a $2 million blackmail scheme by CBS News producer Robert “Joe” Halderman.
Halderman was allegedly trying to blackmail Letterman because he was incensed that his own live-in lover, Stephanie Birkitt — Letterman’s longtime personal assistant — was having an affair with her boss.
On the heels of Halderman’s arrest, the Web site TMZ.com reported that former Letterman intern Holly Hester, while studying at NYU, had secretly dated him, too.
“I was madly in love with him at the time,” ”Hester told the site. Her husband later denied the report.
Levine was initially quoted by TMZ yesterday as saying that “due to recent circumstances, we will have a discussion with those in charge of placing our interns at the David Letterman show in the future. We will diligently oversee this internship program to ensure that our interns are out of harm’s way.”
She later told Quad News, “I didn’t mean to suggest a monumental change or that we are not going to consider the Letterman show as a possible placement.”
dan.mangan@nypost.com