"Here's a few items"--grammatical query

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

   I was asked yesterday about the sentence "Here's a few items," said frequently by a local radio announcer.  Why not "Here are a few items?"
My gut feeling is that "Here's a few items" *should* be ungrammatical but is nevertheless acceptable.  But if "Here's a few items" is acceptable, is "Here is a few items" (with "is" rather than the apostrophe + s) also acceptable?

Gerald Cohen