What a brutal month September was for funerals — I’ve only just finished weeping! All of my close personal friends are dying!

The scariest part is that all of my close personal friends who died in September happen to be in this one photograph that was taken at a party in Manhattan around about 1977. Is that spooky, or what? I’m going to have to start checking my other group photos to see who else is doomed!

We were at someone’s arty loft and Patrick Swayze was showing me how to “throw a pot” on the ceramics wheel. The word “pot” caught the attention of Niels Bohr, who’d shown up for the party in sepia tone, of all things.

He was in town from Copenhagen, where everybody smokes pot. He determined that we had the wrong kind of pot, but sat down anyway and started nattering on about quantum spenning wheels or something, and a crowd gathered round.

Mary Travers from Peter, Paul and Mary was there. She provided the music. And so was Keith Floyd, the celebrity chef, who cooked us some very boozy venison.

Keith Waterhouse, the guy who wrote “Billy Liar”, offered to buy the house a round of drinks if we could help him come up with an idea for another play, but most people were more interested in helping Larry Gelbart write the next episode of “M*A*S*H”.

Jim Carroll was staring at the potting wheel going round and round and suggested having Hawkeye and Trapper John accidentally discover that Colonel Potter is a secret drug addict.

Henry Gibson, who was still very much in “Laugh-In” mode at the time, said that was way too dark, even for “M*A*S*H”, and wanted to do something with a flower theme instead. So he and Jim Carroll got into a poetry pissing contest. I forget who won, but I went home with a nice vase I’d made and put flowers in it.

And then afterward, every time I looked at it on the mantel I kept thinking of the song “If I Had a Hammer”. Spooky, or what?

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra showed up on Facebook on Friday, the eve of the eve of his 60th birthday — apparently the real one, not one of the fakes who’ve borrowed his name previously to chat up FB babes.

Of course I beseeched his comradeship and was soon enough accepted as an official Facebook Friend. Good thing I didn’t wait, too: When I applied for chumdom he already had about 400 friends, and by the time I was accepted, just a short while later, he had twice that number.

So I poked him.

I was, of course, a close, personal friend of Walter Cronkite, who died on Friday in New York at the age of 142.

He was the reason I went into print journalism, in fact. I appeared alongside him on three occasions as co-anchor of the CBS Evening News and he never let my face appear on camera. I quit in disgust and got a real journalism job — at a newspaper.

Was Cronkite just being a beeyotch? He was a nice guy, really, but I pissed him off by reminding him several times during broadcast planning sessions, “Ed Murrow would never do that.”

He’d cry like a baby.

I was, of course, a close personal friend of Karl Malden, who died in Los Angeles this week, and was perhaps the only close personal friend of Allen Klein, who has meanwhile died in New York.

The three of us were at a party at Brando’s in the early 1970s, an “On the Waterfront” theme party, I believe, when Karl and Allen got into a loud argument and I had to step in and mediate.

In the end I persuaded Karl that Allen was probably right: Karl’s Oscar was by then over 20 years old and he could have been “a somebody”, to use the vernacular of the evening, but was ending up “a bum”.

So Karl agreed to take Allen’s advice and kowtow to television. He auditioned for “The Streets of San Francisco”, his career was reborn and, a few years later, Allen also got him the gig as spokesmodel for American Express.

Funny story: When I got home from Marlon’s that night there was a message on my answering machine from John Lennon, who used to be my best friend but had abandoned me about the same time he abandoned the Beatles.

He’d heard I’d been partying with Allen Klein and wanted to know if anything had been said about a possible Beatles reunion. Allen had in fact been enthusiastically discussing proposals for a new album and tour, but I didn’t call John back to tell him. Imagine that.

And if these celebrities don’t stop dying off soon I’m going to have to get a new blog.

I was, of course, a close personal friend of both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, who also died in LA this week, almost in lockstep with Ed McMahon. (Ed at the Pearly Gates: “Heeeeere’s Jacko!”)

Michael and Farrah and I all remained good friends even after I told them both in the early ’80s that I couldn’t stand their work. I think they came to trust in my honesty.

In Michael’s case, he followed my advice. Unfortunately, it was possibly the worst advice I ever gave anyone: I told him to hook up with Paul McCartney and cut a record. The best they could come up with was that stupid “Ebony and Ivory” thing.

I suppose I should have recommended David Bowie instead, but Bowie didn’t do much better collaborating with John Lennon, so who knows?

I advised Farrah to go back to “Charlie’s Angels”. Even though she wasn’t the best-looking Angel, she was the most popular, I said. She ignored me and drifted off into dorm-room-poster oblivion. I could have at least got her on “Dukes of Hazzard”, I think.

The 1980s were awful anyway, for everyone. Surviving that decade was an accomplishment in itself. Christ, I even had a mullet.