“Bruce Springsteen and

the E Street Band Concert”

Saturday at 9:00 on HBO

I ONCE worked with a guy who was the best flirt I’d ever run across. (Oh, give me a break, if I didn’t want to be around flirts, I’d work at home, OK?)

The only thing The Big Flirt (TBF) liked better than flirting was going to Bruce Springsteen concerts and playing the horses.

Since playing the ponies has only been a tremendous source of pain and suffering for me and since I never got Bruce Springsteen anyway, TBF and I never went beyond the flirting stage.

But TBF wasn’t the only one who begged me over the years to go to a Springsteen concert. They all said that’s the only way I’d ever “get it.”

This is like being told that you should learn to eat caviar – even though it’s an acquired taste. Why? I already have enough foods that make me fat, why do I need to find foods that I have to take lessons to like?

You either like someone’s music or you don’t. Right? Wrong!

I finally experienced a Springsteen concert. On tape.

I knew I shouldn’t have gone against my instinct. Now I do get Springsteen, and now I’ll have to spend money on CDs. The concert is so much fun that he is no longer, to me anyway, just a fortysomething guy running away from home.

Last summer’s 10-show run, “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Concert, at Madison Square Garden,” was taped in high definition for this special. And although it was shot on the last two nights, it feels like opening night. No wonder the man’s in such great shape – he works so hard and sweats so much, even his palms get soaking wet.

The concert show airs Saturday night on HBO, which means fans will get two consecutive nights of Steve Van Zandt. Night One you get hip Little Stevie Van Zandt complete with that giant schmata covering his head, while on Night Two you get mobbed up Van Zandt, on “The Sopranos” in his equally familiar giant rug which, as you know, is so bad it makes the schamta look good.

What you also get to see is the band from the vantage point of the cameras in back of the stage which tragically points out that most of the rockers have giant bald spots – like a band full of guitar-playing St. Anthonys.

Unless you live in solitary confinement, you know that Springsteen’s wife, Patti Scialfa, is part of the band. I always fear whenever the wife gets in the act – think Wings, think Yoko, think Ricky Riccardo. Or worse – think Andy Williams whose wife sang in everyone of “The Williams’ Family Christmas” shows. After shooting one special, she immediately ran off to accidentally shoot another – her ski instructor lover. Putting the wife in the act never works out, believe me.

The exception is Scialfa, whose voice is magical, and haunting. This is because she was hired to work with the band before they became an item. She wasn’t a non-musician who married well for a living.

Hopefully, she doesn’t enjoy skiing.