Bret Michaels Wins 'Celebrity Apprentice' Despite Illness

After suffering a brain hemorrhage last month and a warning stroke last week, Bret Michaels overcame his health woes to win Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice last night. In the season finale, Michaels defeated actress Holly Robinson Peete in the final challenge, where both contestants had to make a Snapple commercial. "I’m a problem solver, a rock & roll MacGyver," Michaels said of his ability to overcome the odds. The winner of Celebrity Apprentice receives a $250,000 donation to the charity of their choice, which in Bret's case is the American Diabetes Association. (Michaels has had Type 1 diabetes since he was a child.) On last night's episode, Michaels still displayed a slight limp when he walked — one of the effects of his brain hemorrhage last month — although the rocker is still undergoing rehab. "Lately it seems like me just standing up is risking my life," Michaels joked on the show.

Look back at Michaels’ craziest days with Poison.

Despite his health setbacks, Michaels has lined up a busy schedule for the coming months. He’ll be hitting the talk show circuit this week, including an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on May 25th. On Friday, Michaels is scheduled to return to touring and while the release of his new album Custom Built has been delayed to allow him to recover, Michaels is slated to release the record on July 6. Later this fall, Michaels will return to television when his new VH1 reality show Life As I Know It premieres; the show will preview on May 31.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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