Why letterman hates leno

So it was mutual. No, I was not fired. Whether the show was good, not good, mediocre, ugly, awful, Paul Shaffer, you can count on him and the fantastic music. The thing that I miss most, other than the friends that I worked with, is not having the great privilege of live music every night. Why White Socks? Seriously, what color are these socks? So kill me, I got a deal at Target. Guest Relations: I was from old school Johnny Carson.

I never talked to a guest before the show because I wanted that first reaction to be the first reaction. I think a lot of the guests might have thought that was selfish and rude — and yeah that too — but it created an energy and had pretty good results.

My inspiration for the remarks came from Rudolph Giuliani. This was the old Rudolph Giuliani. I honestly just had to kinda talk my way through it. And then Regis Philbin was on the show, and I started to make fun of Regis, and for seven or eight minutes, the world for me kind of righted itself, because I could make jokes about Regis. You just looked at one car at a time. You know, when I started, Letterman was a great wordsmith He could put things together, but he's kind of a hesitant performer.

I was a very loud, boisterous performer, but I wasn't that good a writer. He subverted the showbiz conventions of late night; he poked fun at the high and mighty; he did absurd things like showcase Stupid Pet Tricks and toss TVs and other heavy objects out of high-rise windows just to watch them smash on the pavement below.

Leno was a near-universally admired stand-up comic, but an innovator he was not. He was a comedian in the Bob Hope mold, a reliable deliverer of snappy punchlines. The battle for that throne was so notorious it became an HBO movie. Whether that was fair or not hardly mattered. He almost never gives interviews well, until his finale approached, anyway. He is famously prickly on-camera and off. But his detachment was part of the act and made his fans love him even more. While it appears there's been tension between the two ever since, Leno claims that's not the case.

I am a huge fan. He could put things together, but he's kind of a hesitant performer," Leno continued. So I'd watch him and go, 'Oh, man, how do you put those sentences together?