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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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…

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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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.

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 

You know who we mean… the people that think Sarah Jessica Parker isn’t rather horsey looking and own Everybody Loves Raymond box sets and use words like ‘exspecially’ and have read all of the Nicholas Sparks books. Well, these are the same people that think Jay Leno is funny – no, really, apparently there are people out there who think that – and now these people are running big huge media networks and are trying to get Jay Leno to come not be funny for them when his contract expires next year.  

Oh, forget the stamp. The closest blunt object will do. 

You know who it sucks to be right now? Conan O’Brien, that’s who. Four years ago NBC announced that it would replace Jay Leno with Conan O’Brien on the late night circuit in 2009 when everybody’s contracts were up. Conan probably grew accustomed to the congratulatory fruit baskets and Post-Its on his windshield saying ‘Can’t wait for ’09. Keep Smiling’! Now the fruit and love notes have stopped because they all wish they’d just signed Jay Leno on for more years and left Conan sobbing into the inflatable raft his giant head uses as a pillow.  

Despite the fact that Jay Leno’s jokes are so predictable and mainstream that we have to re-grow brain cells that have died from boredom, Jay Leno’s ratings are through the roof. He’s the highest rated late night talk show host. We know, we know. We were astonished as well that it was Jay and not Jimmy Kimmel that topped the list. But said ratings have created a great deal of courting for Jay Leno from big name networks like ABC and Fox.     

So, what will Jay decide to do with so many delicious career options on his plate? Besides eating them, that is. Nobody knows yet. Leno’s lawyer, said:  

“Jay will of course honour his contract obligations to NBC. Jay isn’t talking to anyone about anything and won’t be until it’s contractually proper.” 

That’s right, he will honour his obligations and at the contractually proper time he’ll make his decision rolling around in piles of money while wearing a money-suit and smoking money cigars. Probably piles of about $40 million a year, in fact.

 Still, it baffles us that Jay Leno is so popular. Maybe everyone’s afraid to not laugh. Maybe they think if they don’t laugh, people will say their prejudice against jutted-chinned people with lisps and will have to go to prejudiced-person rehab like Isaiah Washington and Mel Gibson. Yeesh.   

Read more: 

Jay Leno Hunted By Network Companies – Eflux

But also there's a chance that Jay Leno will sue you and win. And that's what's just happened. Jay Leno has just won a lawsuit against Judy Brown, who published compendiums containing jokes stolen from his routines.

And as a result Judy Brown will have to publish something less funny instead, like… nope, there isn't any less funny than one of Jay Leno's jokes. 

This writers' strike has been tough on a lot of people, but none have suffered quite as much as Jay Leno. For the strike means that Jay Leno has to host his big-rated nightly hour-long talkshow completely unscripted. And if anything that even so much as looks like a scripted moment occurs, Jay Leno gets called a bastard by the entire WGA.

Worse still, movie stars don't want to cross the picket lines to appear on Jay Leno's show, so he's been reduced to interviewing people like Jimmy Kimmel – which is basically the equivalent of shouting questions into an empty, vaguely ape-shaped, well.

But things aren't completely bleak for Jay Leno because he's just managed to sue the ass off a woman who stole some of his jokes for compendiums she put together. Reuters reports:

The publishers of such compendiums as "Jokes to Go," "Comedy Thesaurus" and "The Funny Pages" vowed to immediately stop printing and distributing the books in a settlement with Leno and fellow comedians who sued author Judy Brown. "In my books, I have published jokes of Jay Leno and the other comedians in this lawsuit without their permission," Brown said in a statement. "I sincerely apologize for doing so. I greatly admire the creativity, wit and energy of stand-up comedians, and I recognize that comedy is as much an art form as other types of creative expression."

Ethically it's a tricky one. On the one hand Judy Brown obviously put Jay Leno's jokes in her books because she's such a big fan of his, and it looks a little unfair when a multimillionaire TV star sues his fans.

But on the other hand, Judy Brown is a Jay Leno fan, so she's probably mad as a biscuit and deserves to be shut away in a lightless box for the rest of her life.

See? We told you it was a tricky one. 

Read more: 

Jay Leno gets last laugh on joke books - Reuters 

Non existence is the ultimate freedom! 

But as much as he is impartial to the enslavement of children and probably their parents in Johnson's cellar, Jay Leno is un-impartial about the writers strike. He went back to work recently with the blessing of the Writers Guild, and delivered an impeccable monologue. The thing was so good that the Writers Guild thinks he may be using a secret writing staff and now they want to kill him forever.

We wrote that lat bit from scratch. Sweeping and powerful, right? We're not union.

When Jay Leno returned to the air, everyone thought he was gonna have to rely on his old material, like eating Doritos and telling you to eat them too, because they're so delicious and affordable and friendly. Doritos – available worldwide!

But when he went out on stage he didn't bring a single bag of chips. No – he went out there with only his wit, and some jokes he'd written for himself. He told his audience:

"I write jokes. We are following the guild thing – we can write for ourselves."

Well apparently he can't, because Patric M. Verrone, lord of the striking writers, said:

"You want a quote from me? I'll give you a quote from me – You guys are all dick-tits. There, that's a quote from me."

Wait – that wasn't Verrone that was our grandmother's third journal. It's got multiple chapters like that. Here's a real quote from Verrone:

"I can understand that there may have been some confusion for Jay about that…[but now] I made it absolutely clear that he cannot write for the show."

We're with ya Verrone! In fact we're with all th righters. We dont cair enuff to actually stop righting, but we refoos to use spel check until this hole mess is sorted out.

Until then strike, you dick-tits, strike! Luv you Gramsie!

Read More:

WGA Calls Out Leno On Monologue – Variety