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Ryan Seacrest: I Didn’t Have a Meltdown; Was Just Being “Playful”

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Ryan Seacrest says he was "just having fun" on Tuesday night's Idol — where he waltzed with a random audience member during Tim Urban's performance, did the air guitar and made a sexual quip to Adam Lambert.

"Often, I will playfully do things to amp up the energy for the live show, because it's at the end of my long day," Seacrest, 35, tells the Los Angeles Times of his hyper behavior, which caused Entertainment Weekly to declare that he'd "completely lost his everlovin mind."

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"I was enjoying it. We've done this show for nine years. When they take me out into the audience, sometimes the energy out there takes me to a different place," adds Seacrest, who also hosts a morning radio show on KIIS-FM, produces several shows for the E! network and hosts its news show.

Of his decision to dance with a beefy guy in the audience, which he joked was season 8 contestant Michael Sarver (it wasn't), he says, "That guy looked like the most inappropriate person to dance with, so I figured, 'Let's pick him up and just dance with him for a second.'"

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(Urban, meanwhile, has said, "I didn't really know what they were doing…people were laughing, so I just had to zone out and keep thinking about my song.")

Seacrest says most of his dialogue is "unscripted," including his quip to Lambert (he told the season 8 runner-up, "My tongue isn't nearly as talented as yours") and his joke about season 1 co-host Brian Dunkleman helming Idol Gives Back.

"I was also setting up the fact that we're going to do a 10-year anniversary and look back on all of the different things that have been a part of this show… including my see-through shirts, my frosted tips, Simon with the bad hair and his pants jacked up," Seacrest says, "so the 10th-anniversary season is gonna be fun."

Related: PICS: Before they were Idol judges

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