Rivers Romancing Soft-porn Publisher

Comedienne JOAN RIVERS’ love life has taken a funny turn - she has fallen for the man behind the Perfect 10 soft-porn empire.

Norm Zada, 59, admits he has been in love with 76-year-old Rivers for over 30 years after meeting her backstage at a comedy show.

He told her about his lasting crush when he became a subject on her new TV show How Did You Get So Rich - and Rivers was so taken by his loyalty she agreed to date the former mathematics professor-turned-publisher.

What makes the odd romance even odder is Zada made a name for himself by refusing to work with cosmetically-enhanced models - and now he’s dating perhaps the world’s poster woman for nips and tucks.

Zada reportedly launched Perfect 10 in the mid-1990s after a friend was rejected from the pages of Playboy magazine because her proportions did not fit the magazine’s tastes.

But despite his own personal taste for ‘real’ women, Zada has always found Rivers “intriguing” and “fascinating”.

He says, “I was in love with Joan for quite a while back, about 30 years ago… but I had to admire from afar. I got that. She was happily married.

“Then all of sudden they decide to do this show about how I made my money and I had an opportunity to meet her in person - and we got along very well.

“I’ve always had a lot of respect for her and now we’re dating. It’s just started and I’m supposed to see her in L.A. when she next comes here. She is a very intriguing lady.

“I would say I have a fascination with her. I’ve met a lot of natural beautiful models in my time, but I can appreciate women who are incredibly intelligent and are so interesting to be around and learn from, I’ve always told people that without a high IQ I don’t care how attractive the women is, I can’t personally get interested in her. Joan is at the very end of the spectrum in terms of IQ.”

And Rivers has confirmed she and Zada are an item; her publicist states, “Joan is dating Norm Zada.”

Zada, the son of Fuzzy Logic computer scientist Lotfi Zadeh, previously worked at IBM and was an adjunct mathematics professor at Stanford University, Columbia University and UCLA, where he penned textbooks on computer science.

He turned his back on academia to become a professional poker player before starting up the Perfect 10 empire.

His glossy full of lovelies wrapped up business in 2007, but the enterprising businessman still oversees the spin-off website and remains one of Los Angeles’ most powerful players, living among the rich and famous like Denzel Washington, Sylvester Stallone and Rod Stewart in Beverly Park, where Rivers was a recent guest.

And he’s already planning a future with the comedienne, who has been single since her beloved husband Edgar Rosenberg died in 1987.

Zada adds, “I would like to go out to lunch with her for the next five years, absolutely, because every meeting would be intriguing.

“I absolutely adore her and just love the IQ and the knowledge and the enlightenment. She’s a great dinner companion. We’re going to have fun together because I’m going to love talking to her and hopefully she won’t hate talking to me.”

Rivers isn’t Zada’s first funny gal - he briefly romanced beloved comedienne Lucille Ball.

Zada reveals, “She used to call me ‘The Computer’ and I would go visit her at her home on Roxbury in Beverly Hills, and we basically just played backgammon… We were very close.

“But Joan is actually a lot funnier in person than Lucy was… Joan Rivers is in a class by herself.”