Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t a very good actor and a worse politician. However, all you stoners who have chuckled your way through various lines from Predator or Conan The Barbarian can now breathe a little easier.

If you’re lungs aren’t shot from hammering bongs every night this month.

Basically, Arnie has claimed that no one cares if people smoke marijuana in an interview on a popular US chat show. He said that in an interview, rather than said that no-one cared if you were in the very specific situation of being stoned during a chat-show.

Anyway, one of the biggest names in Hollywood -20 letters* – who became Governor of California in 2003, signed a law five weeks ago which enabled those people in possession of up to an ounce of marijuana to escape with a $100 (£62) fine and not be arrested or receive a criminal record.

That’s nice isn’t it? Provided you’re not driving a combine harvester down a freeway or something.

He defended the law in a TV interview, telling host Jay Leno on the Tonight Show that it was a good idea.

According to a transcript of the interview, Schwarzenegger said:

“No one cares if you smoke a joint or not.”

Or gobble down handfuls of banned steroids just before a weightlifting competition, presumably.

Anyway, if you don’t know, on election day, voters rejected a further motion that would have allowed adults aged 21 and older to possess and grow small amounts of marijuana.

So there you have it. If your parents catch you with a great stinkin’ joint dangling from your lips, just point them in the direction of Arnold Schwarzenegger, because he says it’s cool to do drugs. Just don’t get wrecked and then try watching Total Recall because it will make a complete and utter mess of your brain.

Especially the three-tits bit.

* Joke c/o some comedian whose name escapes us presently.

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Right now, Jay Leno needs a friend. Well, OK, not a friend as such. What Jay Leno needs is a sycophant with a guitar.

This isn’t usually a problem. Because no matter how many painfully unfunny jokes he tells, or how many soul-crushingly mediocre local newspaper headlines he reads out, Jay Leno knows that his bandleader Kevin Eubanks will get a kick out of them. Because Kevin Eubanks is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most easily amused man on the face of the planet.

But now it’s been reported that Kevin Eubanks has had enough of Jay Leno. Apparently Kevin plans to leave Jay Leno’s new Tonight Show at some point in the near future. We’re not sure why, but he probably wants to move onto a job where he gets to laugh at things that are slightly funnier than Jay Leno. Like, you know, terminal illness or the collected works of Sylvia Plath.

These have been a rough few months for Jay Leno. Where he was once named the man who Americans would most like to invite for dinner, he’s now the man who Americans would most like to run up to in the street and shout “Why? WHY?” at before bursting into tears and collapsing to the floor as he walks away with a weird shrug/smirk combination playing across his face.

Jay Leno’s problems are endless. His prime time show was a failure, he’s being held responsible for Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show departure, his big Oprah Winfrey interview came across as needy and pathetic, and saving both his reputation and the Tonight Show following his various debacles is going to be an uphill – some would say impossible – struggle.

But it’s OK, because at least Jay Leno has Kevin Eubanks. Good old Kevin Eubanks. No matter what trouble Jay Leno finds himself in, Kevin’s always going to be there with an insincere chuckle, a spontaneous guitar riff and – if Jay is really lucky – an awkward ‘you the man’ fingerpoint. It doesn’t matter how bad things get, Jay Leno will always have Kevin Euban…

What? Kevin Eubanks has had enough of Jay Leno too? This is a disaster! People reports:

NBC so far has not officially confirmed the latest shock wave to hit Leno’s show, first reported by L.A. radio K-EARTH 101 and also being reported by the New York Times. Eubanks, a jazz guitarist who joined The Tonight Show in 1992 and became bandleader two years later, simply “wanted a change” and a chance for new opportunities.

It’s hard to work out what new opportunities Kevin Eubanks thinks he’ll find. We’ve seen a copy of his CV, and it’s not very impressive. It’s just an A4 piece of paper with “Skills: laughing at things that aren’t funny, playing up to three descending notes on a guitar at any given time, doing awkward ‘you the man’ fingerpoints (basic training)” written on it in biro. He’s never going to get another job.

The real question, though, is how this will affect Jay Leno. The easy thing for him to do would be to hire another chuckling simpleton as bandleader and let him take over Kevin’s fake-laughing duties. But maybe that’s not what Jay Leno should do. Maybe Jay should find the bandleader that most accurately reflects his current situation. Which sounds easy but, seriously, you try and find a swirling vortex of apathy that can play the guitar. It’s harder than it looks.

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Did you see the Super Bowl yesterday? Oh boy, that sure was some game – the way that one team beat another team?

Amazing. And the Super Bowl half-time show, where half of The Who sang some songs in a fairly nondescript manner? Wowsers, talk about entertainment. And then there were the Super Bowl adverts, like the one for Dockers where nobody wore trousers, and the one where Toyota hilariously apologised for recalling five million cars because they were potentially lethal. Classic Super Bowl.

But the biggest Super Bowl moment probably came with the 15-second commercial for David Letterman‘s show. Why? Because it reunited Letterman with his arch-enemy Jay Leno, which is a big deal if you like that kind of thing.

For the most part, yesterday’s Super Bowl was a crushing disappointment. Usually the big news of the day comes from the half-time show, but that wasn’t the case this year. The protests against The Who’s appearance didn’t turn into a full-scale riot, Pete Townshend didn’t make his guitar look like a willy like Prince did a few years ago and Roger Daltrey didn’t even pop one of his nipples out. It was very disappointing.

And the Super Bowl itself wasn’t much better, on the basis that American football is a sport that people only pretend to like. So that just leaves the commercials. And, luckily, David Letterman had something quite special in store for us. Look…

Look! It’s David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey, who David Letterman was once engaged in a long feud with. And there’s Jay Leno, who David Letterman has been engaged in a feud with for almost 20 years. Together! On a sofa! For 15 seconds! Together!

The advert was a masterstroke for all kinds of reasons, especially because the recent palaver over Conan O’Brien and The Tonight Show gave Leno and Letterman a new excuse to snipe at each other with unbridled ferocity on their shows. And now it would seem that all the bad blood’s in the past.

The three stars come out of the commercial looking better than ever, too. David Letterman looks like a good sport for arranging it, Jay Leno gets to take another step towards public redemption and Oprah Winfrey looks like a comedy genius just by sitting next to Jay Leno – who is, after all, about as funny as herpes.

And the repercussions of the commercial should be great, too. If it works, all three will see a direct ratings boost as a result. And if it doesn’t work, the worst-case scenario is that the world gets a much-needed reminder of what wonderful actors they all are. People forget that Oprah Winfrey was once nominated for an Oscar, or that Jay Leno was once in a buddy action movie with Mr Miyagi, or that David Letterman was once in one episode of Mork And Mindy 31 years ago. The offers should come flooding in now.

But the David Letterman commercial wasn’t the only good thing about yesterday’s Super Bowl. There was also… oh, who are we kidding? Yes it was.

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These are interesting times for Jay Leno. Sure, he’s always been an odd-looking, charmless, unfunny man.

But people liked him. Now, though, thanks to the palaver over NBC and The Tonight Show, that’s all switched around. Because he’s seen, rightly or wrongly, as the man who forced Conan O’Brien off the air, Jay Leno has emerged as the villain of the piece – a reputation not helped by the fact that he looks like the sort of person who’d sneak into your house and night and stab you through the eyeball with his chin.

Anyway, in a last-ditch attempt to win the public over again, Jay Leno has appeared on Oprah to say that he’d like to talk to Conan O’Brien soon. That’s more or less what he said, anyway – what he said was a bit more whiny and annoying. And unfunny, too. Don’t forget unfunny.

We’re now four days into this new post-Conan wilderness and, for the most part, things have reverted back to normal. David Letterman is still griping about anything that happens to pop into his mind, Craig Ferguson is still conducting imaginary three-way conversations between two versions of himself and a crocodile puppet and Jimmy Fallon is still rightly being ignored by the world at large.

Things aren’t completely back to normal, of course – Conan O’Brien has stopped hosting The Tonight Show in order to concentrate on weeping into his Scrooge McDuck-style money vault full-time, and then there’s Jay Leno. And, for someone who prides himself on being a regular, trustworthy, man on the street, Jay Leno’s public image has taken an almighty battering for his part in NBC’s woes.

That’s bad news for Leno – if he loses his reputation as middle America’s favourite everyman, he’ll have nothing left. He’ll just be a tired old man telling weak topical jokes to a sycophantic guitarist who gets paid to laugh at him. But this won’t be the end of Jay Leno, not as long as he’s got powerful friends like Oprah Winfrey to help him out.

That’s why Jay Leno has decided to appear on Oprah – to a) show the world that he’s still the same old middling, inoffensive, mediocre everyman that he ever was and b) talk about Conan O’Brien in a manner that superficially resembles sympathy. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

Winfrey Have you talked to Conan in person?
Leno I haven’t talked to him through all this. No. I haven’t.
Winfrey Did you want to pick up the phone?
Leno Yeah, but it didn’t seem appropriate.
Winfrey Why?
Leno I don’t know. I think it — let things cool down and maybe we’ll talk, you know.

Of course, pretending to be the bemused bystander in all of this is just Jay Leno’s first step towards reclaiming The Tonight Show for himself. The second step involves doing an extra-long patronising high-five session with his audience at the start of his first episode back.

Then, and we could be wrong here, Jay Leno will start ploughing his fortune into the research and development of low-temperature technology so that, even after he dies, he’ll still be able to present The Tonight Show With Jay Leno’s Cryogenically Frozen Head and nobody will ever be able to take his place ever again. Ever.

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This Jay Leno/ Conan O’Brien thing is still rumbling on, even though it’s been going for three weeks.

Or five years. Or 17 years. Or wherever you want to draw the starting line. Anyway, it’s been going on for so long that a pattern has developed – Conan O’Brien uses his show to bash NBC, Jay Leno uses his show to sort of bash NBC but not enough for anyone to be convinced and the whole world remains fixated on the saga of two middle-aged millionaires who read Tiger Woods jokes from pieces of cardboard for a living.

But last night the formula changed. Jay Leno used his show to put his side of the story across. And there wasn’t a single joke in the entire segment. Which, come to think of it, isn’t that unusual for Jay Leno.

It looks like, by the end of the day, a settlement will be reached regarding this brouhaha about Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno. And, if our predictions are correct, then this is what will happen…

* Jay Leno will return to 11:35 to become the host of The Tonight Show again.

* Conan O’Brien will walk away from NBC with a $30 million severance package, a stipulation that he can’t start another show until September and a temporary gagging order.

* Although momentarily confused that a white-haired chinny midget is telling the exact same jokes that the lanky ginger lady would have otherwise told on The Tonight Show, somehow viewers will manage to get over it and the world will somehow keep turning.

But that’s all to come later today. And because of this, Jay Leno used his show last night to set the record straight. For some reason, just because he’s starting to look like the sort of person who’d compulsively stamp on the throat of anyone who so much as thought about taking his job, Jay Leno has emerged from this affair as the bad guy. But in actual fact, as he spent five minutes explaining to his audience, Jay Leno is actually a really great guy – and, for the record, he really loves that red-headed chap who he keeps screwing over. People reports:

“Through all of this, Conan O’Brien has been a gentleman,” Leno said during the taping. “He’s a good guy. I have no animosity towards him.” For now, Leno said, it appeared that he would be returning as host of The Tonight Show after O’Brien apparently rejected moving to midnight. “So that’s pretty much where we are. It looks like we might be back at 11:30,” he said. “I’m not sure. I don’t know.”

But anyway, as nasty and bitter as this has all got, at least we can be sure that it won’t be long before we can all put an end to this, and everyone involved can move on with their heads held high.

That is, you know, until Jay Leno sees someone eating a sandwich that he likes the look of, at which point he’ll go out of his way to make their life a misery until he can have the sandwich for himself. But we’ll deal with that when we have to.

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Americans just love their late night TV talk shows. It’s huge over there: even bigger  than apple pie, white picket fences and an incomprehensible urge to waggle their willy at underdeveloped Middle Eastern countries.

Which means the reports that one of the shows’ hosts might be quitting because another one wants his old job back are completely overshadowing the rest of the world’s news (you know: earthquake kills hundreds in Haiti, a man with implausibly white teeth won’t be presenting his talent contest next year, yadda yadda yadda).

Read on to find out how this battle of the wills (and chins) may play out.

Yes, the Americans are obsessed with these talk shows. More specifically: their hosts. And these are turbulent times for those televisual colossi.

We reported several days ago that Jay Leno - a man whose first ever job was renting out his chin for use as an ironing board by poor local housewives – wanted his ruddy show back thank you very much from the young pretender, Conan O’Brien. Leno had last year given up the show to O’Brien, taking himself and his improbable chin to a slot earlier in the evening.

Yesterday Conan hit back, telling executives at NBC that there was no way he was going to move his show again: he’d won it fair and square from Leno (whose second ever job was providing his chin to the military for use as a runway for B52 bombers). Here’s the story from O’Brien’s side:

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35…I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show.

Wow. Things are getting extremely passive-aggressive over there. Before you know it they’ll be leaving each other notes on the fridge door in the NBC kitchen. “Would whoever happened to mistakenly remove my time slot please return it to it to where they found it. Thank you so much.”

There can be only one winner in all this: David Letterman. His show on a rival network will by default become the only place where people who can’t sleep can watch celebrities they don’t like talking about a film they won’t see.

Whichever way it goes, Jay Leno won’t be worried. If the whole TV host thing ended tomorrow, he could always go back to his third ever job (using his chin as a sturdy bridge for people wishing to drive from England to Jersey).

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You know how bad films often end with the villain coming back to life after it looks like he’s been killed?

Jay Leno does. He’s just like Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze, only with a deadly razor-sharp chin and bad jokes instead of metal claws. Fans of late night television probably thought they’d seen the last of Jay Leno when he left the Tonight Show last year to start his stupid new 10pm programme. But – and brace yourself for this – he might be back soon.

According to reports, Leno may soon leave 10pm, reclaim the Tonight Show and push NBC’s late-night schedule back so far that Jimmy Fallon‘s show would air to an audience exclusively made up of badgers, werewolves and weeping, emotionally distressed would-be murderers. So it’s not all bad news, then.

What you’re about to read is the reason why America is brilliant. The biggest entertainment story of the day involves Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and whatever’s on TV between 11:30 and 1:30 at night. It’s the biggest news story of the day. That’s like if, over here, the biggest news story of the day was about Channel Five moving its live roulette gameshow SuperCasino forward by an hour, or if The Sun dedicated an entire front page to bemoaning the fact that BBC Two was replacing the 12am BDO darts championship highlights with the 1am extended BDO darts championship highlights.

Again, America is brilliant.

But this is a little different, because it’s basically about Jay Leno’s inability to die. Last year Jay Leno hosted his last-ever Tonight Show then, instead of retiring with grace, bagged his own 10pm show to kick the wind out of Conan O’Brien’s sails. However, since Leno’s 10pm show turned out to mostly be about him grilling celebrities about how disappointed their dead mothers would be of them, it hasn’t done very well, and is reportedly on the verge of cancellation.

And that means that Jay Leno is finally going to retire with grac… what? He might be getting the Tonight Show back? Oh heavens. The LA Times reports:

Jay Leno, the former king of late-night television who was pushed out as host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show” last year and then struggled in his new prime-time slot, is in talks to return to 11:30 p.m. Conan O’Brien, who succeeded Leno, would either go back to following Leno or leave the network.

Of course, the obvious thing to do here would be to commiserate with Conan O’Brien. He’d spent five whole years preparing himself to host the Tonight Show and now, because Jay Leno’s Deceased Maternal Shame Hour turned out to be as crap as everyone expected, he looks set to be screwed out of his dream job after just six months.

That’s unless the other rumours – the ones about Jay Leno getting a new 30-minute Tonight Show that Conan will follow for an hour at midnight – are to be believed. That’d be an interesting prospect, and by ‘interesting’ we mean ‘mindblowingly cack-handed’. Still, one thing’s for certain – this story looks set to dominate the news for the next couple of months. Congratulations Jay Leno – you’re the new Kate Gosselin.

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Kanye West has already apologised once for hopping onstage at the MTV VMAs and stamping on Taylor Swift’s heart.

But that’s not enough. Because, as we all know, an apology isn’t really an apology if it’s bellowed across the internet, peppered with several thousand exclamation marks and features the word ‘BOOOYAAAWWWW!!!!’ or any related forms thereof. Which is why Kanye West apologised again on TV last night.

If fact, Kanye West announced that because of his VMA behaviour, he’s going to “take some time off and analyse… how I’m going to improve”. So that’s the last we’ll see of him, then.

It’s hard to know who to side with over this whole Kanye West/ Taylor Swift MTV VMA thing, isn’t it? On one hand it was completely wrong of Kanye West to barge up onstage, rip the microphone out of Taylor Swift’s hands and tell her that she didn’t deserve to win because she wasn’t as good as Beyonce. Because, whichever way you look at it, he cruelly shot down Taylor’s big moment.

But on the other hand, Kanye West was sort of right about her video not being very good. Plus, right after he’d finished Taylor Swift sort of looked like somebody had punched a hole in her chest and, really, who doesn’t delight in the misery of others? Plus, Kanye West got to bust out the word ‘BOOOYAAAWWWW!!!!’ during his unfathomable internet apology to Taylor Swift. You know what? Looking at it like this, we actually think we’re on Kanye West’s side here.

It’s a shame that Kanye West isn’t, though. Thanks to a mixture of bad timing and a desperate need to make Jay Leno‘s new show look less like the big bag of warmed-up sick that it actually is, Kanye West was last night made to atone for his actions.

But at least nobody got carried away. After all, nobody died. It was just a moment of oddness that raised the profile of everybody involved, and the incident should be treated as nothing more than a brief ephemeral curiosity that won’t really affect anyone’s life in the slightest.

Of course, when we say ‘nobody got carried away’ we meant nobody except for Jay Leno, who decided to ask Kanye West what his recently-dead mother would think about the incident. But at least Kanye West didn’t over-react. It’s not like he announced a temporary retirement from music just because he made a slightly annoying country singer a little bit sad for a couple of seconds, is it? Is it?

“I’m ashamed that my hurt caused someone else’s hurt. After this, I need to just take some time off and analyse how I’m going to make it through the rest of this life, how I’m going to improve, because I am a celebrity and that’s just something I’m going to have to deal with.”

Oh, it is. Nice job of keeping everything in proportion, chaps.

Incidentally, if Kanye West is looking for ways to improve, then we’ve got some advice for him – try to use the word BOOOYAAAWWWW!!!!’ a bit less. No, wait. More. Use it more. That’d be much better.

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Have you heard the news? Mel Gibson has got his new girlfriend pregnant! Wait, you had heard the news?

You’d heard the news because it’s been widely known for weeks? Fine. But have you heard the news of Mel Gibson’s impending fatherhood as told by a jittery, shifty-looking middle-aged man who looks as if he harbours several controversial beliefs regarding the Jewish faith? You haven’t? Good, because Mel Gibson did all of that himself on Jay Leno last night.

And the truth is that Mel Gibson got her pregnant and soon he’ll be a dad again. And that’s it. Ta-daaaah!

For a man who doesn’t have any new films coming out until at least next year, Mel Gibson is everywhere at the moment. Everywhere. He’s all over the internet, filling up magazines and on celebrity TV shows so often that we’re genuinely getting nostalgic for the time when he was forced into exile because everyone hated him and actively wanted his career to end.

This sudden wave of attention is, of course, all down to the recent comings and goings in Mel Gibson’s personal life. In the space of – if memory serves correct – about three seconds, Mel Gibson divorced his wife, started going out in public with his new Russian girlfriend and then knocked her up good and proper.

It’s all a bit bewildering, really. Not because the story behind Mel Gibson’s divorce has yet to properly come to light, but because it’s mildly horrifying that any woman would let a man who spent so many years growing such a horrible mullet get close enough to her to make pregnant even a distant possibility.

However, despite all the headlines he’s generated, Mel Gibson hasn’t actually spoken about any of these developments in public – which is probably down to the fear that he’d use a television appearance as an excuse to get drunk, call everyone ‘Sugartits’ and end up explaining at length why the Jews are to blame for everything from all global conflicts to the way that sometimes vending machines don’t accept your coins first time – but now, finally, he has.

Mel Gibson was the first of Jay Leno’s final-week special guests last night, which gave him a chance to fully and frankly get his side of the story across in incredible detail. People reports:

Leno joked with Gibson about his dating a younger woman. “What, is she 17, 18?” Leno asked. Gibson replied that Oksana Grigorieva was almost 40 and “now I am going to have two women mad at me!” Leno then said, “The rumor I have heard is that you guys are going to have a child?” Gibson then confirmed, “This is true. We’re gonna have a child.”

See? You don’t get more fuller or franker than “We’re gonna have a child,” do you? Still, maybe Mel Gibson is waiting to explain the pregnancy in one of the ways he’s most comfortable with – either by making a four-hour gore-porn movie about it where everyone speaks in Chicomuceltec, or by incoherently screaming it at a policeman who’s just arrested him for drink-driving.

We’d prefer the latter, by the way.

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Jay Leno is famed for his strong work ethic. And his inordinately large chin. And his basic inability to be funny.

But for now, let’s concentrate on his strong work ethic. Jay Leno never calls in sick, which is why it was such a surprise yesterday when he cancelled an episode of his show to go to hospital. Nobody is saying exactly what’s wrong with Jay Leno, but it’s thought that he was hospitalised by Madonna as revenge for throwing her off his back last weekend.

Because, you see, Jay Leno looks a bit like a horse. If you squint.

If anyone happened to see Conan O’Brien running around Burbank yesterday with a shifty look on his face and a gigantic tub of salmonella in his arms, it might be worth contacting the relevant authorities. Because Jay Leno was hospitalised with what appears to be food poisoning yesterday and – you know – in Conan’s position, who wouldn’t?

Of course, it might not have been food poisoning – that’s just blind conjecture on our part based on the principle that, if it’s anything more serious, a mental image of Conan O’Brien deliberately contaminating Jay Leno’s body with, say, leukaemia would basically be horrific – but the point is that Jay Leno cancelled the taping of his show last night to go to hospital.

Now don’t worry, middle America, you’ll still be getting your hour of muddled observational comedy and softball interviews next week. Jay Leno’s condition is said to be mild, and it definitely isn’t a heart attack brought about by the pressure of having to entertain that one ridiculously easy to please guitarist of his night after night, as the New York Daily News reports:

Leno, 58, wasn’t feeling well, NBC spokeswoman Tracy St. Pierre said, but she was quick to shoot down Internet chatter that he had had a heart attack. “No! My gosh!” St. Pierre said. “He’s doing fine… He was kidding around with the hospital staff and running his monologue jokes by the doctors and the nurses. He’s expected back to work on Monday. “This is first time he’s missed a show – period!”

At this juncture we really have to show our appreciation to the brave men and women who have been treating Jay Leno through this difficult time. It really is a worst-case scenario for them – one one hand Jay Leno is ill enough to go to hospital for treatment in the first place, but on the other hand he’s not so ill that pharmaceutically-induced unconsciousness will prevent him from telling his crappy jokes to anyone who comes within 20 feet of him. They’re in an unenviable position, that’s for sure.

But still, let’s hope that Jay Leno makes a swift and full recovery from his mystery illness. And let’s also hope that last night’s cancelled guest Ryan Reynolds will be unable to reschedule his appearance. We dodged a bullet there, folks.

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10 – Will Smith doesn’t die enough: fact – Premiere

9 – Guess what Samuel L Jackson‘s TV edit of his famous Snakes On A Plane line is. Guess a million times. You’ll still be wrong – Bestweekever

8 – A bunch of celebrity photos that are odd, to say the least - PopEater

7 – Harry Potter: now with Hermione in an uncomfortably sexy dress – Popsugar

6 – Headlines we didn’t really expect to see: ‘I Breastfeed My Father’ - Yahoo

5 - I’m So Bad At Sex Dot Com. You’ll thank us for this one – Imsobadatsex

4 – Masturbation: the FACTS! UGH! – Psychologytoday

3 – A list of the worst action stars of all time. Jay Leno is number one - Popcrunch

2 - So we’ve decided to save you some legwork and find a clip of it on YouTube. On reflection, we agree with his inclusion in the list – YouTube

1 – If anyone ever asks you what the internet is, this video is probably the perfect distillation…

If you’re a fan of smug, unfunny comedy but you go to bed quite early, Jay Leno’s new 10pm NBC show must feel like a godsend.

A whole hour of Jay Leno telling reheated 12-year-old Bill Clinton jokes at a time that even allows the elderly to be somewhat nonplussed by it? Brilliant! But what’s the show going to be like?

Well, according to Jay Leno himself, it’ll be just like his old show but with more ‘stunts’. And stunt number one? Seeing how quickly he can send Conan O’Brien into the depths of gibbering impotent psychosis. We imagine.

Depending on who you ask, NBC’s decision to give Jay Leno a new show at 10pm every weekday is either genius or utter madness. The naysayers are claiming that NBC broadcasting three near-solid hours of talkshow each night is too much, that it shows the network is turning its back on quality primetime television and that if Jay Leno wasn’t even funny at midnight when most Americans are drifting of into a pharmaceutically-assisted sleep, then he’ll be even less funny at 10, when most Americans are getting drunk and beating their wives.

But these people are wrong. The new Jay Leno show is going to be a success. A horrible, horrible success. Even if it fails it’ll still be a success. Compared to a big drama series like, say, Law And Order, an hour of Jay Leno babbling about cars and holding up pictures of unfunny news stories will be so cheap that it’ll still be more profitable even if nobody watches it.

What’s more, with its winning talkshow line-up of Leno, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon, NBC will be able to offer its viewers three different takes on the day’s news – the gentle mainstream one from Jay, the smarter, more sophisticated one from Conan and one jittery, pretend-nervous one that isn’t remotely funny and gets delivered by a person that most people would like to punch in the mouth.

But, aside from being cheap – and the source of Conan O’Brien’s lingering resentment for many years to come – what’s the new Jay Leno show even going to be like? Luckily Jay Leno himself has been on hand to tell TV Week:

“‘The Tonight Show’ belongs to Conan O’Brien now. So the desk, the format … it will be a little bit different. It’s really based on what do people like and not like. I’ve been keeping notes for 17 years. I’m not going to suddenly start doing modern interpretive dance. I like to stand up and tell jokes.”

You hear that? Jay Leno’s new show will be completely different to The Tonight Show – yes, there’ll be a monologue and some celebrity guests and stunts and topical jokes and whatnot, but it’ll be called The Tonite Show instead of The Tonight Show which, as any fool can see, is completely different.

But still, are we the only ones who see a flaw in this plan? Jay Leno says the show is going to be ‘based on what do people like and not like’ – but, since it’s a show that’s got Jay Leno in it, our guess is that it’s going to veer more heavily to the ‘not like’ side.

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In May, Jay Leno was due to retire from TV and spend his days droning witlessly about cars and getting chin massages.

But that was never actually going to be the case. There’s such a dearth of middle-aged male millionaires who aren’t as funny as they think they are on TV right now that Jay Leno was never going to stay retired for long.

And now we know what Jay Leno’s next show will be – it’s his old show, basically – on the same network, in the same studio and broadcast 90 minutes earlier so even more people can get contaminated by watch it.

It’s fair to say that there are two types of people in the world – the type that finds Jay Leno funny and the type that’s medically allowed to operate heavy machinery.

However, you can’t deny Jay Leno’s popularity – whether it’s because he’s been the voice that lulls America to sleep with slightly rubbish jokes and interviews so bland that they may as well be conducted by a knitted frog in a hat for 15 years, or whether it’s because people love watching middle-aged men make blusteringly inappropriate gay jokes to minor actors, Jay Leno is inexplicably beloved by millions of weirdos.

And that causes a problem for NBC. Years ago Jay Leno decided that he was going to retire from The Tonight Show in 2009, so NBC quickly moved in and made sure that they signed up Conan O’Brien to take his place. But then as 2009 got closer, Jay Leno got ants in his pants and decided that maybe he wanted to stay, but he couldn’t stay, and all the other TV networks were like “Hey, come join us!” and Jay Leno started spinning around in a daze and took out six storefront windows with his giant chin because he was so disorientated. Figuratively.

But now the problem has finally been solved. Jay Leno has announced his new show, and it’ll come as good news to anyone who liked his old show. Because, well, it is his old show. But here’s the thing – it’s going to be broadcast at 10pm instead of 11:35pm. The New York Times reports:

The new show, which will begin next fall, is expected to be set in Mr. Leno’s longtime studio in Burbank, Calif. Mr. Leno is expected to retain many of the most popular elements of his “Tonight Show,” including his monologue and bits like “Headlines” and “Jay Walking.” One “Tonight Show” staff member said the new program would not be a variety show.

Theoretically this could be a winner for NBC. Jay Leno is a much-loved performer who’ll be exposed to an earlier timeslot – and therefore a much bigger audience – with his new show. This could mean he’d get the jump on all the big-name guests, leaving the late-night talkshows to blunder through interviews with reality TV stars and authors of books about amusing rock formations.

There are downsides to this gamble too, though – by putting his show on at 10pm five times a week, Jay Leno’s competition stops being David Letterman and starts being CSI and Without A Trace and other wildly popular police dramas that he’ll have trouble keeping up with.

Plus, putting Jay Leno on at 10pm means that NBC is giving over three hours of every day to three different versions of the exact same formula. Not only is 15 hours a week of chat massive overkill, but it’s going to make people resent poor Jimmy Fallon more than they already do, if that’s even possible.

Finally, though – and this is the biggest downside of all – how long will it be before America discovers that it only found Jay Leno funny when it was drowsy and on the verge of sleep? We’re going to hazard a guess here – it’ll be about 12 seconds.

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The early ’90s, eh?

Who can forget those heady days of Global Hypercolour t-shirts, Monster In My Pocket collectible figurines and Channel 4′s Red Light Zone? Jesus – who on Earth can forget Channel 4′s Red Light Zone? Certainly not anyone who was entering adolescence and had a portable TV set in their room, that’s for sure.

Why are we waffling on about the early ’90s so much? Because that’s where this here clip originates from. It’s the first in a new feature called Hecklerspray Oddities (original working title: Clips That We Quite Like But Couldn’t Really Find Any Other Way Of Linking To Them On The Site), in which we present to you a series of clips that we quite like but couldn’t really find any other way of linking to them on the site.

Enjoy, then, a young Jim Carrey partaking in a spot-on sketch show spoof of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.

Jay Leno's crushing inability to make people laugh has long been well-known but, heavens, he's surpassed himself this time.

A few nights ago, while interviewing Ryan Phillippe on his show, Jay Leno ditched the usual question/answer format to basically goad Ryan into pulling his 'gayest face' until he threatened to walk offstage.

And now Jay Leno has apologised. He's now come to realise that mocking homosexuals in the 21st century is both outmoded and offensive and has promised that next time Ryan Phillipe comes on his show he'll only restrict himself to try and make him jump up and down for food in a loincloth like the black people do.

If you believe what you read, then Jay Leno is everyone's ideal dinner guest because not only would he regale you with anecdotes about his 16 years spent interviewing the world's biggest stars, but he could also bore you into a coma with endless car talk and – if you're really lucky – chuck in a few breathtakingly inappropriate cracks about gay people who pull funny faces when they talk.

Or at least that's what Jay Leno used to be able to do. Now the liberal elite have banned Jay from ridiculing homosexuals just because he made a breathtakingly ignorant remark to Ryan Phillippe during an interview with him last Thursday. What next? Telling us we can't dress in hoods and set fire to immigrant children any more? For fuel or fun? Once again, this is a prime example of political correctness gone haywire.

But anyway, back to the interview. Discussing Ryan Phillippe's first role as a gay teenager on a soap opera on his show, Jay Leno said:

"Say that camera is your gay lover. Can you give me your gayest look? Say that camera is Billy Bob [Thornton]—Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming."

To which Ryan Phillippe wriggled around uncomfortably while making semi-joking threats to walk off if the gay jokes continued. Seriously, that boy. He won't talk about that time he broke up his marriage by cheating on his wife and he won't pull exaggerated gay faces into a camera. What does that leave to discuss? Igby Goes Down? Please.

Now, following and instant and audible backlash from both the gay and sensible onlooker communities, Jay Leno has issued a sincere apology from the bottom of his chin:

"In talking about Ryan's first role, I realize that what I said came out wrong, I certainly didn't mean any malice. I agree it was a dumb thing to say, and I apologize."

Of course, Jay Leno is absolutely right to apologise to his offended viewers. As others have commented, Jay Leno wouldn't have dreamt of asking Ryan Phillippe to pull his blackest face or his Jewiest face, would he? Which is a shame because, ironically, Ryan Phillippe's Jewiest face is downright hilarious. You ain't never seen a Jewier face, that's for sure.

Read more:

Jay Sorry for "Gayest Look" Crack – E! Online