Name: Jonathan Ross on Letterman, November 6, 1991
Uploaded: 2018-09-18T17:07:59.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jonathan Ross on Letterman, November 6, 1991' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-09-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jonathan Ross on Letterman, November 6, 1991' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-09-18. Transcript available.

the clams they are a coming when do we get him uh shortly eh Morty 70 and there
will be a full
200 a full complement of clams a battalion a battalion of clams our next guest
is uh perhaps
the most popular talk show host in the united kingdom and his current offering
is entitled
tonight with jonathan ross which is currently broadcasting uh from here in new
york city live
back to england every night ladies and gentlemen please welcome jonathan ross
oh jonathan
how you doing nice to meet you you know people you get a pretty good
reception there do you find that people in this country from their travels or
or friends who live
in in great britain know of you some people do i think uh i mean there seem to
be a lot of people
from the uk over here i don't know how many in the audience but a lot of people
coming to see our shows
have come over for holidays and just for just to see the city yeah you know you
seem like a very young
guy how did you get this job how did you get started what what's going on there
uh well i've
been doing i've been presenting shows for about five six years back in the
united kingdom before
that shows that means you're like the host of the show just like you yeah but
not quite like you but
well you're a lucky man then well uh and i've been doing these shows for five
six years before that
i worked behind the scenes uh you i think you call them talent coordinators we
call them researchers
booking the guests and i worked on a talk show and i i figured that i could do
the job better than the
host right which is what i think uh the people who work for me probably think
and i'm sure maybe the
people who work for you probably think it's a common thing uh talk shows all
over and i managed to get
the chance to do my own show yeah so so you led some sort of coup is that what
no no no no he was
it was a painless thing and he was taken off the air before my time you know i
was years and years ago
uh when i was living in los angeles i was lucky enough to be invited to be a
guest on another show
and for the life of me i can't remember the guy's name and i flew all night
from los angeles to new
york and then got on the concord and flew to london and i drank straight
through for like 18 hours
what was do you remember is there uh what is his name and then you did the show
did you yeah i was
on the guy's show what was the name a good segment he's got like a uh it's like
mike douglas but it's
des o'connor des o'connor yeah yeah yeah whoa um now now this i would like to
see i was drunk
well i'm sure it's the only way to do that show you know he was perfectly nice
i am due to do that as
soon as we go back to the united kingdom but that show has been on forever hasn't
it an awful long
while not quite forever slight exaggeration um but but an awful it seems like
forever
but may i just say how excited and honored i am to be invited here on the show
on clam night
because even even back in the united kingdom we know the excitement that grips
this city when you
ordered clams from uh hurley's well we're completely ignoring that ban on shellfish
we're just going
to go right ahead uh but you know what was funny about the des o'connor show uh
i was supposed to tell
jokes and i had been living in in los angeles for about five or six years and
there was a a certainly
a nice group of folks in the theater there in london they didn't know me they
didn't care about me
they didn't care about my little jokes the biggest laugh of the whole evening
was i said i had been in
my hotel room watching snooker and because because i mispronounced the word snooker
that's funny
to us the place went crazy because well you see snooker is the big big sport
back there on tv it's
a boring sport but it's very popular and you just it's easy to say there were
two o's that's snoo
because i want to say snooker is a it's a moron thing to do and therefore it
would be found amusing
so no disrespect intended i mean that yeah but that's why it would be funny it
would like me
saying football you know it's just it's just so remarkably simple to get it
wrong means you were
just very stupid and therefore and kind of a boor and yeah had no business
being in the country and
did they invite you back on the show no no no they never did but but i i had a
feeling that this is the
kind of show that may be on two or three years but i understand it's been on
ever since and was on like
years before that well you see it's very hard to be taken off the air in great
britain you see
because i mean i had i've had many shows some have been very successful some
have failed miserably
and they survive people you know they just it's very laid-back attitude they
say well it's it's not
very good is it no it's not really and that's the meaning you'll have to
determine and then they'll
say well thanks for coming by and you'll go back and do it again it's a brutal
it's a it's a tough world
yeah but i try to explain to us what it is when we go over there because uh i
think americans are
surprised not only at what seems to be the lack of a variety of of certainly
commercial television
but also commercial radio it's hard to find radio when you're we we don't have
as much i mean it's
it's broadening out but you see it's a very strict country you know they have
lots lots more rules i
mean your country seems to be commercially run you know it's like if someone
can make a buck doing
something let's go sure absolutely and in our country it's very different they
kind of don't want
you to make any money um and and like when when they opened up the radio
recently they let two new
stations come on there one was a jazz station and you know it's limited appeal
and the other one
was a greek station which is fine nice for the greek population to have a
station no use whatsoever
to the rest of us you know but who's making those choices who's making the
decisions for that greek
people i imagine i don't know i'm not party to this uh uh and and and your show
now what what kind of
things are you doing on the present uh incarnation of the jonathan it's pretty
much a standard talk
show uh certainly by american standards i guess what makes it different is in
england we don't have
the same kind of talk shows we don't have anywhere near as many uh and they're
they're not so much
fun as the ones over here so we're doing a combination of uh celebrity guests
and also some
of the wacko sort of people you would have on uh we have them on and a few news
items about new york
while we're here that kind of thing yeah uh and and it's uh you get great
guests don't you've been
really well not in england we don't but over here yeah why are you doing here
you get the great that's
why we came basically what was the story with uh uh dripping the water on the
guys uh uh who was that
well we you see when we this is a show i did years ago which was started off
and it was a kind
of late night comedy talk show of the sort that might seem familiar to you uh
and we wanted to do
gags and scripted stuff and sometimes the ideas were great and sometimes we had
those moments i
believe you described them as a dry patch on the snow yeah whatever yeah you
had a few this evening and
last week uh we had many of those and we had uh rob lowe booked on the show and
spike uh spike lee and
we thought spike lee was as he would be in uh she's got to have it a light-hearted
young fella
and he's a very nice man but he's not a light-hearted man is he very serious i
believe very serious very
intense young man and i had no idea this and we thought a great gag on the show
would be the studio
roof is leaking and there's water dripping in throughout the show you see you'd
have liked it throughout the
show pox and pans are being put on the desk and i was doing an interview with
spike which turned out
to be a very serious discussion of uh the issue of racism in this country
meanwhile there's big tubs
in front of him and the show it just really went down the pan from there and by
the time uh poor
mr rob lowe and of course this was before we had interesting things to talk to
mr lowe about oh yeah
he was just another pretty boy actor and and now after that of course now he's
a respected filmmaker i
believe i'm not going to talk about and it was just and it was one of those
interviews and i'm sure you
must have had them uh presumably with mr groden i gather where there's nothing
coming back and you're
just having a hard time and uh the director thought sod this and they just
poured all the water oh yeah
sure mr rob lowe's yeah overdoing absolutely that's a very embarrassing time
for everyone yeah well
you can't go wrong with clams jonathan that's what we've learned here tonight
uh all right well hang
around if you can how much longer are you going to be doing your shows from uh
we do uh two more shows
on fire day uh mr al pacino is the guest on one of them see marty marty uh all
right it's a pleasure to
meet you and and i hope one day maybe you'll have me on your show jonathan ross
let's uh