Save tonight
I was going to write a really indignant piece about the recent Tonight Show controversy , wherein poor old Conan O'Brien was effectively forced to quit as host of the venerable NBC late-night talk show to facilitate the return of lantern-jawed former host Jay Leno to the role he'd only vacated a few months previously. Although Leno is very popular, he is an avowedly mainstream comedian who once summed up his job as "Write joke. Tell Joke. Get Cheque." Did you see him on Top Gear ? It was hardly a riot of laughs, put it that way. Meanwhile, Conan has written for The Simpsons (the monorail episode!) and for me has always been a far more interesting, leftfield proposition. And if you haven't bothered to read the above link, suffice to say that Leno and NBC are widely held to be responsible for the whole mess, whilst Conan was the subject of popular campaigns to save his job (see right). So yes, I was going to be all snarky and cynical, and then I saw the clip of...