If you’re measured by the company you keep in this lifetime, then Larry King has a lot of explaining to do.

It’s already been well-established that on most mornings he dines with former publisher Michael Viner, whose history of issuing utter junk between covers probably has Bennett Cerf spinning in his grave.

No chance at winning the Pulitzer or any publishing awards for Viner. His greatest hits include Faye Resnick’s trumped up “Diary” of her days with the late Nicole Brown Simpson; a memoir by four call girls called “You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again”; and disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair’s “Burning Down My Master’s House.” That last book actually put him out of business for good.

So what’s Viner been up to lately? My sources say that he and King are still having their breakfast club. But from last October through this past February, they were joined by a guest member: baseball player Barry Bonds.

“Bonds ate with them almost every morning during the off-season,” says a diner who saw them. And at least on one occasion, the threesome was joined by William Morris Talent Agency chief Jim Wiatt.

At least one person some of these people have in common is jailed private eye Anthony Pellicano. To wit: Bonds used Pellicano about 12 years to shake off a girlfriend who claimed he’d fathered her child.

And Viner, more recently, is said to have hired Pellicano in his nasty divorce from actress Deborah Raffin. What’s known is this: before Pellicano went to prison, he was writing a novel about his experiences for Viner, so that the publisher could keep up his track record of fine literature.

You may recall that prior to his incarceration, Pellicano shopped a TV series based on his life to HBO. Brad Grey, then a talent manager and producer of “The Sopranos,” was the one who brought it to the cable network.

Wiatt, I am told, was going to be the agent on the project. And Oscar-winning director William Friedkin (“The French Connection”) would be behind the camera.

The irony there is that Friedkin’s wife, Sherry Lansing, was then the head of Paramount Pictures. She has since been succeeded in that position by Grey. Small world.

The Pellicano series didn’t sell, and Grey dropped it. But what may have brought Wiatt to Larry King’s breakfast club last winter was Viner’s latest idea: to turn Pellicano’s novel into a movie. Of course, this was before his 120-count indictment.

But imagine if the movie had been made, and Pellicano was released from prison last February without the new indictment. He could have joined the others in the breakfast club, and they all could have promoted the film on “Larry King Live.”