It's the morning after California's recall election, and Bob Guiney is having fun imitating how Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger says the name of the state he's about to run.

"Coll-e-forn-yuh," Guiney repeats when he hears a clip of the new governor's victory speech on TV. He's in the green room of the syndicated morning show "Good Day Live," waiting for Animal Planet star Jeff Corwin to finish his segment so he can talk to Jillian Barberie and Co. about being "The Bachelor."

It's something he does a lot these days, more than his actual job running a mortgage company in Michigan. Shortly after talking to Zap2it in early October, he was scheduled to make his first trip home in a month -- for two days, before heading off to New York for another week's worth of interviews and appearances.

"It's overwhelming," he says. "The fact that you even want to have breakfast with me and talk to me is unbelievable. I have [publicists] making my schedule for weeks on end -- it's way more than I could have imagined."

Such are the demands of being the star of a hit series, one that ABC counts on to deliver those ever-desirable young-adult viewers, while simultaneously working on a book and recording some songs. The fact that people already knew Guiney -- from his time as one of the guys on "The Bachelorette" last winter and subsequent appearances on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Extra" and elsewhere -- only means that people want more from him now.

He's doing his best, though, not to forget that he's had some pretty good luck, starting with the fact that he was cast on "The Bachelorette" after co-workers applied to the show on his behalf without telling him. To keep his head from ballooning under his well-gelled curly hair, Guiney keeps in mind the experience of his old band, Fat Amy, which signed a record deal in the mid-1990s and toured with the likes of matchbox twenty.

"We'd play in front of big crowds, and all the women loved us, the guys loved us -- it was great," he says. "We'd come off stage, and there would be 50 women there talking to us or wanting an autograph. ... It was flattering, but it got to a point where I realized they'd be there if it was my band or the next band. It didn't really matter so much. ...

"These women put in applications [for 'The Bachelor']" -- 15,000 of them, more than for any previous edition of the show -- "when they found out I was going to be the guy. But some of them probably would have still been there if I were the guy or not."

It seemed clear, though, from the way the 25 women on "The Bachelor" spoke of their connection (to use the dating-show term of choice) to Guiney that they were pretty happy he did turn out to be the guy. He admits to being a little surprised at that.

"When they were coming up in the limo [in the premiere] chanting my name, I couldn't believe it. It was really flattering, but it was more like a gut check," he says. "I realized at that moment that I had people's feelings in the balance, and I didn't want to hurt anyone."

Hurt feelings are pretty much a given on "The Bachelor," though, and several of the 21 women sent home thus far have left the show in tears. Guiney says he's been generally happy with the way the producers have handled the show, but watching the women's reaction to being rejected has been tough.

"That was the hardest part, breaking up with someone who's done nothing wrong to you," he says. "These women did nothing to me but pour their hearts out, be very kind and show me love and affection. ... And I really felt bad about having to [send them home]. I didn't want to send anyone home after a while."

As the show has progressed and he's grown closer to the women, Guiney is also taking flak for "acting like all the other Bachelors" by being intimate with more than one of them. The tone of some of the criticism seems to be surprise that the funny, gregarious guy from "The Bachelorette" would never do such a thing.

"I thought it was really interesting when people started responding that way," he says. The process is condensed and skewed -- few guys look for lasting love while dating multiple women at once -- but Guiney thinks that to ignore the physical component of a relationship would be foolish.

Because of the network-enforced ban on face-to-face contact between the Bachelor and his chosen woman between the end of filming and the end of the show's run -- a period of four or five months -- "you better be sure you're making the right decision," Guiney says.

"The only way to make sure you're making that right decision is to know if you have chemistry with someone that can last. Handshakes, hugs and how-do-you-dos are all fine and good, but ... I don't think anyone would enter a relationship if it didn't have that type of chemistry. And you won't know if you aren't being affectionate."

If we're to take Guiney at his word, he found that special someone by the end of the show, and that was always the most important thing to him. He also hopes that people see that he tried to be upfront with the women about what he was feeling as he narrowed his choices.

"I think the women know, or I hope they do, that I was trying to be as honest and sincere as I could with them at all times. I watched 'The Bachelor,' and I know a lot of times the guys would say one thing and do another," he says. "I didn't want to be the guy who did that."