Dan Gross | 'Dice' & his S. Phila. love

SOUTH PHILLY'S

Eleanor Kerrigan

is a tough cookie. The former professional wrestler now butts heads with

Andrew "Dice" Clay

.

The comedian is her fiance, and the couple can now be seen Sunday nights on a new VH1 reality show, "Dice Undisputed."

Kerrigan, 36, a St. Maria Goretti grad, grew up at 18th & Oregon in a house with nine brothers and sisters. She moved to Los Angeles in 1993 to work at the Comedy Store. For a while she was EZ Rider in the Women of Wrestling League. She and Dice, 49, met in 1993, and started dating in 2002.

They were engaged in 2004 and haven't set wedding plans.

Kerrigan says her family loves him. And why not? "He's just a sweet nice guy from Brooklyn," she says.

Dice, who taped his 1989 special, "The Diceman Cometh," at the TLA, says that he always did great playing Clay Heery's Comedy Factory Outlet, since closed, and that he's always loved it in Philly.

But he still prefers Brooklyn.

"We're like 5-year-olds having arguments over what's better, Brooklyn or South Philly," Dice says. He calls himself "the Rocky Balboa of comedy," relating his current struggle to rebuild his career with the comeback of Rocky in "Rocky Balboa."

Kerrigan, meanwhile, is trying her hand at standup. She was too shy to mention it to us, but when we spoke with Dice, he said she's got great presence and material.

Delilah's sending $$$ to Fla.?

Although Greta Shamy's Paradise Theatre in Florida has been losing money since its liquor license was revoked, a spokeswoman for Shamy's Delilah's (100 Spring Garden) says Delilah's is "not under any financial distress and continues to be succesful."

Sources tell us the local gentlemen's club has undergone recent cost-cutting and layoffs, and had previously been pumping much of its money into the Paradise at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Fla. "Paradise and Delilah's are two separate clubs and corporations that operate independently," says Delilah's spokeswoman Buffy Varanese.

The Seminole Indian tribe revoked the Paradise's liquor license after the burlesque club "secretly turned itself into a strip club with some dancers prostituting themselves," reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Shamy has sued the Seminole tribe in federal court to get her liquor license back. The club has been closed since Dec. 22, just over a month after it had opened. She told the Florida paper she had spent $7.5 million on the club and denied any prostitution went on at the Paradise during its short run.

* In an unrelated note, the Seminole

Hard Rock is where Anna Nicole Smith died last month.

Howard to help musical kids

Actor Terrence Howard, along with Frank Fountain of DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund, will be at Settlement Music School (416 Queen) to present a $38,000 grant to the school to fund its Kaleidoscope Pre-School Arts Enrichment Program. The "Hustle & Flow" Oscar nominee now stars as Jim Ellis, who has spent 30 years coaching swimming at Department of Recreation pools, in "Pride," which opens March 23. *

If you have something you'd like to share with Dan, call 215-854-5963, or e-mail grossd@phillynews.com. To read Dan's recent columns, visit http://go.philly.com/dangross.