When Carnival Cruise Lines asked John Heald to consider writing a blog, the popular cruise director had a question: “What’s a blog?”

Heald, an amiable 43-year-old Englishman with the build of a bull, tackled the project, which initially was intended to last a month during the launch of the Carnival Freedom in Europe in March 2007.

But the blog has been a hit — 2.1 million hits, in fact — and Heald is still churning out entries daily.

“As long as I see people want to read what I’m writing, I’ll keep on writing,” says Heald.

His musings — which span every topic from etiquette for dealing with deck-chair hogs to the insidious onset of middle age — have spawned a tight community of readers, who regularly post to the site at www.johnhealdsblog .com.

Heald, Carnival’s senior cruise director, hosted a special “bloggers cruise” in January, leading some 700 hard-core fans on a seven-day cruise through the western Caribbean on the Carnival Freedom.

In April, he flew to Los Angeles for the shooting of an episode of Character Fantasy, a program about people living their fantasies, for USA Network. That entailed coaching a California woman who yearned to be a cruise director. She played her role on the Carnival Paradise ship, making the onboard announcements and taking the stage, just as Heald does. The TV program is slated to air June 21.

Carnival is now in early talks with “a major TV producer” about doing a TV sitcom, which would likely feature a cruise director in a central role, says Heald.

“I think it has tremendous potential,” says Roger Blum, Carni- val’s vice president of cruise programming. “Reading John’s blog is like another episode every day.”