Late Show UK

Monday 28th April – Helen Hunt, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Duffy
Tuesday 29th April – Dr. Phil McGraw, the Lopez family, Natasha Bedingfield
Wednesday 30th April – Cindy McCain, Ed Helms, Augustana
Thursday 1st May – Robin Williams, Terrence Howard, Serj Tankian
Friday 2nd May – Sally Field, Jesse Ventura, Sleepercar

These are US airdates. Check the Upcoming Shows box in the sidebar for CNBC.

Updated 3rd May 2008.

Monday 12th May – John Stamos, Judith Smith-Levin, Jaymay
Tuesday 13th May – John Cusack, Paraminder Nagra
Wednesday 14th May – Tony Danza, Maura Tierney
Thursday 15th May – David Boreanaz, Carrot Top
Friday 16th May – Reba McEntire, Vinnie Jones

Updated 3rd May 2008.

Monday 5th May – Hugh Laurie, Michael Starr
Tuesday 6th May – John Goodman, Jason Aldean
Wednesday 7th May – Felicity Huffman, Mike Doughty
Thursday 8th May – Emily Deschanel, Melvin Lardy of “Ax Men”
Friday 9th May – Rachel Griffiths, Christopher Gorham

Updated 3rd May 2008.

Monday 12th May – Stupid Pet Tricks, Shia LaBeouf, N.E.R.D.
Tuesday 13th May – Regis Philbin, Laura Dern, Death Cab for Cutie
Wednesday 14th May – Jack Hanna, Kid Rock, a Top Ten List with golfer Annika Sorenstam
Thursday 15th May – America Ferrera, Russell Brand, Terry Fator
Friday 16th May – Teri Hatcher, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

These are US airdates. Check the Upcoming Shows box in the sidebar for Diva TV.

Updated 17th May 2008.

The latest edition of The Tony Mendez Show is now available on the official CBS Late Show website. This week focuses on the Pope.

The Tony Mendez Show – 22nd April 2008

Russell Brand had to pull out of his visit to the Late Show With David Letterman this week due to allegedly not being allowed into the country. The Sun’s Bizarre column reports “when he arrived at JFK, humourless immigration officials decided to spoil his finest hour with a paperwork problem… he boarded the same plane to go back home”. The Sun also says “the Letterman show will happen eventually — and when it does, he’ll charm the pants off the Yanks”. Danica Patrick and Keith Olbermann replaced Russell and Tina Fey on the show. Tokyo Police Club provided the music.

The Sun – Bizarre – “Now Brand beds a Virgin”
Digital Spy – “Russell Brand denied entry to US”

LSUK In The Press page launched – www.lateshowuk.com/lsuk-in-the-press

Thoughts are rolling in again as to who’s going to take over from Conan O’Brien on Late Night when Conan moves to The Tonight Show next year, and time is ticking away. Leno is, of course, retiring next year – unless NBC executives change their mind and keep him on for another year. Variety.com reports if that were to happen NBC “would have to pay O’Brien a penalty estimated at more than $40 million”. The most logical choice for Late Night – as has been said before – would be Jimmy Fallon who’s proved popular on Saturday Night Live. Not forgetting Carson Daly (currently host of Last Call which airs after Late Night With Conan O’Brien on NBC) – he could also be an obvious choice.

Variety.com says “some of the names floated for O’Brien’s replacement have included Jon Stewart, Dane Cook and Australian television star Rove McManus”. My personal favourite would be Jon Stewart. He’s become hugely well received on The Daily Show (Comedy Central) and also proves he’s liked on a mainstream level – the Academy Awards hosting duties for example. The last piece of the jigsaw for the talk shows in 2009 is whether or not The Tonight Show will stay in Burbank or if it will move to New York City – currently home to Late Night With Conan O’Brien (and the Late Show on CBS, of course). The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was based in New York. I feel The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien should be based in New York and perhaps moving Late Night With ???? to Burbank.

Variety – “Landing the next Conan”

The Colbert Report information on the Where To Watch page has been updated with FX UK details – www.lateshowuk.com/where-to-watch

The Upcoming Shows box in the sidebar has been updated to include The Colbert Report, which airs on FX UK from the 6th May.

The Colbert Report’s first airing on FX UK will go out on Tuesday 6th May at 11pm. The Colbert Report will air at a regular 11pm 30-minute timeslot on the channel Monday-Friday, and there’s a chance to catchup on all the week’s episodes on a Sunday night when FX UK air all four shows from that week back-to-back at around midnight (on Sunday 11th May the reruns start at 11.50pm and run through to 1.20am – that’s a lot of Colbert!). FX UK is available on Virgin Media channel 179, Tiscali TV channel 10 and Sky channel 165.

The Colbert Report will air on a one-day delay from America (like More 4 with The Daily Show), and – as The Colbert Report only airs shows on Comedy Central in the US Monday-Thursday (like The Daily Show) – the Monday evening 11pm show on FX UK will be a compilation show with highlights from the previous week. FX UK have launched a new Colbert minisite at www.fxuk.com/series/the-colbert-report – check it out!

Late Show UK – Where To Watch page
Digital Spy – “FXUK picks up ‘The Colbert Report’”

To avoid leaving a carbon footprint ahead of their US tour, UK band Radiohead are set to pre-record their Wednesday performance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in their London studio.

Frontman Thom Yorke told reporters that the band would be avoiding leaving the equivalent of driving a car for a solid year.

More: Radiohead go green for live show (BBC Newsbeat)

Show Roundups are back. We’ll be posting these up from time to time for specific shows. In addition to the Late Show, we will be doing roundups for other chat shows. Today’s update is a Late Show Roundup for the 3rd April 2008 edition of the Late Show – www.lateshowuk.com/show-roundups

The guests on tonight’s show were Renee Zellweger, Gayle King and Paddy Casey. There’s a new event taking place outside on 53rd Street this evening – tonight Pat Farmer and his team will be dropping 500 baseballs off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theatre building to mark the start of the baseball season. Of course, this event wouldn’t be complete unless they were being dropped onto something – so they’re dropping them onto a parked car. Dave asks Pat to drop one ball off the roof as a test to see what happens. He says if it’s that good with one ball, what will it be like with the full 500? To make things more interesting, they’re now going to be dropping the 500 plus the one test ball – making 501. Gayle King is Oprah’s friend, so Dave mentions his new friend called Joe who’s waiting for him up in the Late Show office. We cut to Joe sitting there completely silent (Dave doesn’t know if he can hear him or not).

Dave’s got a new phone for his desk to replace the old cream coloured one. If you thought the other phone looked old, you obviously haven’t seen this new one. It’s a rotary phone – Dave tries to make calls to times gone by. Dave also has Bill Richardson on the phone, but he’s in the middle of a snack so they can’t speak to him at the moment. Up next – a new advert from Hillary (you know, those “The phone rings at 3am – who do you want answering the phone in the Whitehouse” adverts). It turns out Hillary’s going to always be ready to pick up that phone as she’s going to stay up 24 hours a day on Red Bull, coffee and something from Amy Winehouse (note – not “coffee, cheap speed and doughnuts” that Dave often mentioned).

Great Moments In Presidential Speeches was up next – George Bush (or “still President Bush” as Jon Stewart calls him) couldn’t get the phone number right on a television broadcast. Then tonight’s Top Ten list, which was excuses for getting caught having sex with a picnic table – my favourite in this had to be “was curious if I could have sex with anything more flat and lifeless than my wife” followed by a “Hiyoooo” from Dave. It was then time for the 501 baseballs to get thrown off the roof of the building onto the car down below. Dave thinks they overdid the action replays from multiple angles – I don’t think he thought it was that exciting.

The first guest tonight was Renee Zellweger, who was on to promote her new film with George Clooney – Leatherheads. She did a lot of filming in very cold conditions recently resulting in her getting “lash-cicles” – icicles on her eyelashes – and “snot-cicles” – followed by a trip to Miami where Dave pointed out the snot would be flowing freely. She says she has a very small apartment in New York and that she only goes back a few times a year – mostly just to do her laundry where she is branded a washing machine hog. Also before she went she revealed how she used to drive to Dave’s house years ago to see if he was there, and Dave thought back to when he used to get that a lot.

Gayle King was up next – she’s Oprah’s friend. She talked about growing up in Turkey – she used to think all kids grew up in Turkey back then as it seemed normal to her. There was an awkward moment in the interview – Dave admired her necklace and she thought he was staring at something else! Gayle used to be a newsanchor and remembers a long time ago when she was signing off a programme she said “We’ll all be black next weekend” when she meant “We’ll all be back next weekend”. So she corrected it and said she would still be black but not everyone else. Her boss thought she handled that well. Irish musician Paddy Casey closed the show with a wonderful song – a mellow, chilled out tune.

^ 3rd April 2008 monologue

For upcoming guests please go to www.lateshowuk.com/guest-listings

Check out the Show Roundups page for more.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama will be making another visit to The Daily Show on Monday. He appeared via satellite on The Colbert Report on Thursday last week – Hillary Clinton and John Edwards also made appearances on The Colbert Report on Thursday. Barack Obama’s appearance on The Daily Show will air on More 4 this Tuesday at 8.30pm.

The Daily Show guest listings (US airdates)

The Colbert Report has been broadcasting shows from Philadelphia this week and the Multichannel News website says “from April 14 through April 17, The Colbert Report averaged 1.5 million viewers from 11:30 p.m. to noon, according to Nielsen Media Research data”. The appearances of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards probably helped the ratings along slightly. When Hillary Clinton appeared on the show, she said to Stephen “I just love solving problems”. Barack Obama appeared via satellite. Also, don’t forget The Colbert Report should be coming to FX UK in May. An unofficial Colbert fansite has posted some further details, including the claim More 4 had the chance to buy the rights for the show, but they didn’t want it.

Multichannel News – “Colbert Takes Philly”
The Caucus – “Clinton on Colbert Report (And Edwards and Obama, Too)”
No Fact Zone – “More on the UK version of ‘The Colbert Report’ coming soon”

Guest listings updated – www.lateshowuk.com/guest-listings

2nd May – Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Downey Jr, Michael Aspel, The Ting Tings
9th May – Sir Alan Sugar, Johnny Vegas, Jade Jagger, Vampire Weekend
16th May – Sarah Jessica Parker, Andrew Marr, Anthony Head, Yazoo
23rd May – Ray Winstone, The Osmonds, Neil Diamond
30th May – Mark Wahlberg, Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Barrowman, Kirsty Young, Black Kids

In addition to Friday Night With Jonathan Ross being aired on a Friday evening, it is also repeated late at night on weekends (usually late Saturday nights).

Updated 17th May 2008.