Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
The comedian Jay Leno became tearful and choked up Thursday as he concluded what he called the “greatest 22 years of my life.I am the luckiest guy in the world. This is tricky,” said the emotional Leno, stepping down for the second and presumably last time as host of TV's venerable late-night program. Jimmy Fallon takes over Tonight in New York on Feb. 17.
It was a tender finish to a farewell show that was mostly aiming for laughs, with traditional monologue jokes, clips from old shows and a wild assortment of celebrities helping to see Leno off.
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| Jay Leno |
Leno first departure came in 2009, when he was briefly replaced by Conan O'Brien but reclaimed the show after a messy transition and O'Brien's lacklustre ratings. In '09, he was moving to a prime-time show on NBC. This time he's out the door, and has said he'll focus on comedy clubs and his beloved car collection.
Looking sharp in a black suit and bright blue tie, Leno was greeted by an ovation from the VIP audience. The typically self-contained comic betrayed a bit of nervousness, stumbling over a few lines in his monologue.
Jay Leno's top targets
For Jay Leno, Bill Clinton was the comic gift who kept giving. By one exhaustive count, the outgoing Tonight show host made 4,607 jokes at the former president's expense during his time on the program.
The Center for Media and Public Affairs catalogued nearly 44,000 jokes Leno made about political figures and celebrities at Tonight through Jan. 24.
His first Clinton joke came on May 25, 1992, shortly after taking over from Johnny Carson and when Clinton was still a presidential candidate.
“Clinton said that he's troubled by the amount of sex on television,” Leno said. "He says that where he's from sex is a deeply personal thing between a candidate and his campaign volunteers.” Clinton was subject of more than a thousand jokes ahead of the runner-up, George W. Bush. His top 10 targets for jokes were:
Bill Clinton: 4,607 jokes.
George W. Bush:3,239 jokes.
Al Gore: 1,026 jokes.
Barack Obama: 1,011 jokes.
Hillary Clinton: 939 jokes.
O.J. Simpson: 795 jokes.
Dick Cheney: 673 jokes.
Michael Jackson: 505 jokes.
Monica Lewinsky: 454 jokes.
Bob Dole: 452 jokes.
About Jay Leno
James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno was born on April 28, 1950. He is an American comedian, actor, voice actor, writer, producer and television host.
Leno was the host of NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992 to 2009. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. After The Jay Leno Show was canceled in January 2010 amid a host controversy, Leno returned to host The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on March 1, 2010.[3] Leno hosted his last episode of the Tonight Show on February 6, 2014.
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