By JEFF CRAIG --

NEW YORK -- He just turned 43 and makes - the estimates vary between $12 million and $17 million a year.

But it ain't easy being Howard Stern.

Closing in on six-foot-six and sporting rock star hair (the Louis XIV cut, he calls it), Stern can't hope to blend into the crowd if he goes out in public. So he doesn't, unless it's a publicity stunt.

And when he's behind the microphone on his syndicated radio show, he ends up costing his bosses a few million bucks in fines for saying exactly the things people aren't supposed to say on radio.

Like offering John Bobbitt cash if he'd show his severed penis ... telling talk-show host Maury Povich that his wife, Connie Chung, has large breasts "for an Oriental woman."

Or, more recently, his quip that he's been having problems with his prized salt-water pet fish at home, and there's "more death in my fish tank than in the Empire State Building. I've now started to call the fish tank `Holocaust With Bubbles.' "

And while only Americans hear his show or see his E! television program, Stern is pretty famous around the world for being Stern - appearing in drag on Letterman and Leno, or, most notoriously, appearing on the MTV Music Video Awards as his bare-cheeked Fartman.

More people attended the New York premiere of Private Parts (opening tomorrow) last week than attended the Grammy Awards. Which was really the problem when it came to adapting his best-selling autobiography (the fastest selling in publishing history), Private Parts, for the big screen: people expect the outrageous all the time. "I wanted to do a real story," Stern was saying just after one of his shows recently, "and make a film that would make people laugh.

"But it looked like the film wasn't going to be made. I had script approval and I was rejecting script after script - mostly because they were over-the-top comedies. They were dumb, boring, dull, like every other comedy that's been coming out with the cast of Friends or Pauly Shore."

Stern's intention was to show the evolution of a geeky, timid New York Jew into, well, Fartman. And the self-declared King of All Media. "If I'd made a movie that basically showed the radio bits, just me running around the studio doing my thing, well, that's what people get on radio, on E! television every day," Stern says.

"With Private Parts, I wanted to reveal something new, something I hadn't shown the audience before."

Like his wife, Alison.

In the movie, she's portrayed by actress Mary McCormack (Murder One), but Stern thinks the film answers a question he gets asked often: What kind of woman would marry Howard Stern?

Firmly faithful to his wife of 19 years - which, he likes to point out, many of his "family values'' spouting detractors (like Bob Dole) are not - Stern credits her with his success, and often talks on air about her.

As depicted in the movie, Stern plays pranks like having porn stars appear in his studio, and tells them on-air that his wife has died of cancer, so it's OK for him to fondle them all he wants.

Other times, he's chatted about his sex life at home. On one occasion, he revealed that she'd just suffered a miscarriage, joking that he'd taken Polaroids of the fetus in the toilet for the grandparents.

"Just 'cause the little guy's in formaldehyde doesn't mean he can't lead a productive life."

Anything is fair game for Stern's show, he says.

"There is a betrayal in the relationship. My dream was to be honest on the air and tell people everything that was going on in my life. That was not my wife's dream.

"The idea that this woman fell in love with me and was willing to travel the country with me and be such a close friend to me was remarkable. Yet we have this issue in our lives, which is this radio show."

That show has earned Stern millions of dollars, millions of fans and legions of detractors.

"Well, there are people who don't get the radio show," Stern admits. "It's not their cup of tea or brand of humor, and they are identified as Howard-haters. But I make people happy from six until 10 in the morning, which is the most miserable time of the day. I don't understand why anyone would be threatened by that."

Being misunderstood is another thing that ain't easy about being Howard Stern, he says. "There's a lot of people who think you just go on the air and say `penis' and that's how you get an audience. When I was fired from NBC, they put another guy on and told him to talk for four hours and say some dirty words.

"That's not what the show is about."

Which is why, Stern says, he's never faced serious competition. "I think I've spawned a lot of bad radio, quite frankly. You can steal an idea, but you can't steal someone's personality."


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