I'll Be There

TUBE TALK Denis Leary announced on Tuesday's ''Late Show With David Letterman'' that he's setting up a fund within his Firefighters Foundation to benefit the survivors of New York's rescue workers. Leary set up the foundation in the wake of a deadly 1999 fire in Worcester, Mass., that killed several firemen, including his cousin. The actor, who lost a friend in one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center, stars in the New York-based police comedy ''The Job,'' which uses as advisers and extras many New York firemen and policemen who lost colleagues at Ground Zero. Leary said that even in the best of times, scarce funding has left firemen underpaid and underequipped, and that ''The Job'' has donated firefighting gear it purchased as props to the firefighters who work on the show....

Even though news coverage forced ''Politically Incorrect'' off the air last week, Bill Maher got paid his usual salary. So he's donating last week's pay to the relief effort and is asking others who were sidelined to do the same if they can afford to do so. Still, Maher's good will gesture has not prevented two sponsors, Federal Express and Sears, from pulling their ads from the show in the wake of comments he made on Monday's that called U.S. actions in the Middle East ''cowardly.'' He disagreed with President Bush's labeling of the hijackers as cowards, noting that it takes physical courage to fly a plane into a building and stay aboard during impact. In contrast, Maher said, ''We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.'' Maher issued an apology yesterday, saying that his criticism was directed not at the military but ''for politicians who, fearing public reaction, have not allowed our military to do the job they are obviously ready, willing, and able to do and who now will, I'm certain, as they always have, get it done.'' ABC backed Maher in a statement saying, ''While we remain sensitive to the current climate... there needs to remain a forum for the expression of our nation's diverse opinions.''

BYE, JEEVES In the wake of the terror attacks and the depressed Broadway box-office climate that has followed, two investors have pulled out of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical ''By Jeeves,'' forcing producers to postpone its October 28 Broadway opening indefinitely. It's the second show this season to fail to open as a result of the disaster, but while the first, Stephen Sondheim's ''Assassins,'' featured dark material that suddenly seemed inappropriate (it's about notorious presidential assassins), ''By Jeeves'' was a light comedy, based on P.G. Wodehouse's stories of aristocratic twit Bertie Wooster and his unflappable butler, Jeeves. Maybe the backers feared that such lightness would make it seem as inappropriate to potential ticket buyers as the grimness of ''Assassins.''

COVER TO COVER At least two new books inspired by last week's events will hit stores over the next few weeks. The first, an oral history called ''09/11 8:48 AM: Documenting America's Greatest Tragedy,'' is a joint venture of Internet publishers BookSurge.com and Blueear.com, and will be available in both electronic and print versions by September 30. The other, ReganBooks' ''God Bless America,'' will be a literary anthology of new essays, poems, and stories, and should be on sale by the end of the year, with proceeds donated to the relief efforts.

Other books have been affected by the tragedy. The day of the attack coincided with Simon & Schuster's release of ''Germs: America's Secret War Against Biological Weapons,'' cowritten by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad. Initially published in a run of 15,000 copies, the book has quickly topped Amazon.com's bestseller list, leading S&S to print an additional 100,000 copies. S&S's division The Free Press has moved uppublication of ''Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden'' from next spring to this November. The author is CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen, who interviewed bin Laden in 1997. And New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who completed his manuscript for the ReganBooks autobiography, ''The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice,'' just nine hours before the disaster, is going to write another chapter.