It's kind of giddy making when you hear Eric Braeden's voice on the phone.
This is the man, after all, who has played the iconic Victor Newman -- The Mustache as his nemesis Jack Abbott calls him -- the bazillionaire anti-hero on "The Young and the Restless" for more than 30 years.

It's that voice; the elegant German accent that's both lilting and masculine and that makes saying stuff like "I'm Victor Newman and I do as I damn well please. I always have and I always will" sound pretty fabulous.

So you can imagine the glee when the first thing he says on the phone during a break from a "Restless" shoot is, "Can you believe it? Yesterday, I was at a pig pickin' in Bath and today I'm working in Los Angeles."

Why am I not taping this?!

Seems Braeden was in the Tar Heel state recently screening "The Man Who Came Back," a film he starred in and produced in 2008. "You live in a beautiful state," he says. "The people could have not been more hospitable."

It looks like Colleen's heart is going to waste.

TV Guide magazine is reporting that Eric Braeden, the iconic big man of Genoa City, is leaving CBS' "The Young and the Restless."

It seems Sony took advantage of a standard clause in soap contracts that leaves a star’s salary prone to renegotiation every 26 weeks. Sony demanded that Braeden take a major pay cut; Braeden chose to walk.