Newly retired from The Tonight Show, television host Jay Leno is now being awarded the top US humour prize for following in the tradition of satire and social commentary of Mark Twain, the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts announced on Wednesday.
Leno will be honoured with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour in a performance by his fellow comedians on October 19 in Washington.
The award recognises people who have had an impact on American society through their humour and social commentary.
“Like Mark Twain, Jay Leno has offered us a lifetime’s worth of humorous commentary on American daily life,” said Kennedy Centre Chairman David Rubenstein in announcing the award. “For both men, no one was too high or too low to escape their wit, and we are all the better for it.”
After learning about the prize, Leno said in a statement that he’s honoured and is a big fan of Twain’s. He joked that A Tale of Two Cities is one of his favourite books. The novel was written by Charles Dickens.
Leno inherited the Tonight Show seat from the legendary Johnny Carson in 1992, beating out David Letterman, and was the top-rated late-night host for years. Letterman was the first between them to win the Kennedy Centre Honours, but Leno was first to win the top humour prize. But Kennedy Centre producers aren’t weighing in on which man is funnier.
For years, Leno also has maintained a busy schedule of stand-up comedy appearances, testing his humour in nightclubs and theatres with more than 100 performances a year. He passed the Tonight Show mantle to Jimmy Fallon in February.
Since leaving NBC’s late-night schedule, Leno has gained an international following online with his new creation, JayLenosGarage.com, about his obsession with cars. His YouTube channel now has more than 938,000 subscribers.
Cappy McGarr, one of the humour prize’s executive producers, said Leno has been on the list of great comedians to honour for a long time. It wasn’t a question of waiting until Leno retired, he said.
“Leno and Twain both have turned humour into a national conversation and a national conversation into humour, and I’m also quite confident they drove the same car,” McGarr said on Tuesday. “You know, we receive bad news every day, and it’s important for us to keep our humour intact, as difficult as that might be. And thank goodness Jay has contributed to our American humour for a generation and made us keep things in perspective.”
Recent winners of the Mark Twain humour prize include Carol Burnett, Ellen DeGeneres, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Bill Cosby.
