If you had read the press release for the 15th Annual Diversity Awards, you would have expected to see Janet Jackson present an award to Chris Tucker but neither showed up. In fact, Tucker wasn't even listed in the program. So when I cornered the PR guy handling the event as the awards were underway, I asked if Tucker was present since I hadn't seen him on the red carpet and had pre-written a column for the paper with him in the lede.

"Let me check the script and I'll get back to you," he said.

He did not get back to me anytime soon and I had to junk my column and write one off the top of my head, dictating it into the phone to an editor as i paced the steps outside the Globe Theater at Universal Studios. I would have been a lot more irritated had I not had Mo'Nique there to make my night.

What. A. Woman.

She was the star of the night and got the evening's only standing ovation. We chatted before the event and I wanted to know if she knew how happy she makes people - how much she makes us smile and laugh out loud.

"If you knew how happy people made me...I pinch myself every morning and think, 'God, for real? Another day of this? Thank you! Appreciate ya sugar.'"

Mo'Nique was honored as the 2007 Renaissance Artist last night. After she gained fame as the star of the hilarious series "The Parkers," she used that success to become a real showbiz multi-hyphenate with her best seller "Skinny Women" and new book "Skinny Cooks Can't Be Trusted," a movie star in such films as "Queens of Comedy," "Phat Girlz," "Hair Show," and "Good Fences," a TV host of "Showtime at the Apollo," and the full-figured beauty pageant "Mo"Nique's F.A.T. Chance."

She says: "When you start playing by your own rules and you start playing in your own ball field, it's incredible. And when people start coming out to your games? It's really incredible....You create your own options. Just believe, that's it. People think it's a special formula where you gotta take a pill. Just simply believe. I'm a 250 pound black woman, all you gotta do is believe."

Mo'Nique brought her grandmother to the event and tearfully paid tribue to her from the stage. Earlier, she told me: "My grandmother has been an incredible force in my life. Very humble, very kind. Not real fancy. She's very simple and to the point. So when you see Mo'Nique, you see a whole lot of her."

And there were plenty of other terrific talents on hand including honorees Elijah Kelley ("Hairspray") Brittany Snow ("Hairspray"), Jackie Warner ("Workout"), Kenny Ortega, director of "High School Musical" 1 and 2), Lisa Edelstein who accepted an award for "House."

Kevin Frazier of "Entertainment Tonight" was a smooth and charming host while E! personailty Debbie Matenopoulos was pretty annoying I must confess. Comedy is not - I repeat, not - her forte.