Joy Behar, comedian and talk show hostess, right, with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a fellow host, on the set of the talk show “The View,” in New York. Behar officially gave up teaching three decades ago for a career as a stand-up comic, but this former high school English teacher still feels the need to instruct.

NEW YORK — Joy Behar officially gave up teaching three decades ago for a career as a stand-up comic, but this former high school English teacher still feels the need to instruct.

“Do you use condoms?” she asked the hard-partying male stars of the MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” when they appeared on “The View.” The guys answered yes. She pursued her point: “And in the hot tub? Because, you know, the, uh, thing can come off in the hot tub.”

Over dinner (salad, a crab cake and white wine) on a recent evening at Porter House New York in Manhattan, Behar said, “Someone once told me I’m still teaching, only now I have a bigger classroom.”

As a regular at this clubby restaurant on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center, she was greeted effusively by the senior-dining-room manager, Tim Brown, who guided her, along with a “View” publicist and a reporter, to a window table offering dazzling views of Central Park. Behar had just finished taping “The Joy Behar Show” after shooting a “View” episode in the morning.

Her cable show’s offices and studio are also in the Time Warner Center, so Behar said she often unwinds after finishing up her show at 6 or 6:30 p.m. by dining at Porter House, or A Voce Columbus or Landmarc, other restaurants in the center. What, no Masa, the renowned sushi place that’s just feet away from Porter House? “No, it’s too expensive,” Behar said, with mock horror. “It’s outrageous, I’ve heard.”

Still wearing her on-air makeup and wardrobe of black pants and a knit top, Behar looked like the person she is: a successful woman who, while looking good, is too busy and too sensible to spend hours seeking sartorial and cosmetic perfection.

At 67 (“I don’t lie about my age,” she said), she has not had plastic surgery, but likes Botox, receiving injections every several months. “For the 11’s,” she said, pointing to the space between her brows where vertical lines can appear.

Josephine Victoria Occhiuto — Joy is a childhood nickname, while Behar is a vestige from her 16-year marriage, which ended in 1981 — was born and raised in Brooklyn. Behar, whose native borough was and still is very much evident in her voice, recalled with amusement how years ago an acting teacher had informed her that she’d have to lose her accent. Her response, she said, was, “What accent?”

As a comic, she was blunt but funny, just as she is today. “I want a man in my life — just not in my apartment,” went her most popular stand-up bit. (The man in her life for the last 27 years, whom she calls her “spousal equivalent,” is Steven Janowitz, a former New York City schoolteacher.)

Her gig on “The View” came in 1997, after Barbara Walters, who helped create the show and appears on it, saw Behar perform at Milton Berle’s 89th birthday tribute. Of the show’s original on-air posse (which included Meredith Vieira, Star Jones and Debbie Matenopoulos), only Walters and Behar remain. “I outwitted, outlasted and outsmarted them all,” Behar joked.

The show on HLN, CNN’s sibling network, was offered to her last fall after she’d filled in repeatedly, and racked up ratings, for a vacationing Larry King at CNN. Behar, whose show is opposite King’s and sometimes beats it in the ratings, has been mentioned as a possible successor to him. “I’m flattered just to have my name bandied about like this,” Behar would later say.

The HLN show is a platform, as is “The View,” for her to share her staunchly liberal ideas.

“I have my moments when I get to say what I want to say, and I so appreciate it,” she said, adding her outspokenness derives from childhood. “I was loved, and no one ever told me to shut up, which is a blessing.”

She is a realist about the balance she must strike on her HLN show between the erudite and the populist.

“Charlie Rose doesn’t have to worry about ratings,” she said. “The rest of us do.”

Translation: While she loves having Gore Vidal on (he did his impression of a pistol-packing President George W. Bush), she must twice as often invite reality TV stars, like Omarosa Manigault Stallworth (of “The Apprentice”) and Danielle Staub (one of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey”), both recent guests.

Behar paused to check e-mail messages and news bulletins on her iPad. “I love it — it’s like an iPhone for aging baby boomers,” she said, pointing to the bigger screen.

Dessert arrived. She bit into a moist forkful of coconut cake and became rapturous: “I’m having an orgasm.” Not a bad way to end a workday.

‘The Joy Behar Show’

When: 9 p.m. Monday-Friday

Where: HLN Network

‘The View’

When: 10 a.m. Monday-Friday

Where: ABC