Craig Kilborn, the new host of "The Late Late Show" on CBS, wants everyone to know one thing.
He's not as big a jerk as he sometimes appeared when he was the host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central."He was an a--hole," Kilborn admitted.
But that Craig Kilborn was, at least in part, a character he was called upon to play. He was the host of that show, but he wasn't in charge of it.
"There were some jokes at 'The Daily Show' that I didn't care for but I was talked into doing. Example -- a Christopher Reeve joke," Kilborn said. "We've done those and I don't like that."
And, he insisted, "I said no to a lot of jokes."
For those of you who have never seen "The Daily Show," it's a daily half-hour program that parodies the news. Kilborn (who has since been replaced by Jon Stewart) was the anchorman of sorts, tossing off joke after joke drawn from the news.
"It was kind of a monster, the headlines, from day one," Kilborn said. "It was just out of control. And it was really hard once you did certain things and pushed the envelope in certain ways to say no sometimes.
"I always found it interesting. I never heard the term 'mean-spirited' linked to me before. I've heard 'smarta--,' 'smug,' 'pasty.' "
Of course, there's another term that's been linked to Kilborn ever since he was co-anchoring "ESPN SportsCenter" -- the term funny. And he is definitely that.
Choosing him as a replacement for Tom Snyder on "The Late Late Show" certainly signals a quantum leap in that program, but it also seems like a natural. His comedic style is very much in the vein of David Letterman, the man who owns the company (Worldwide Pants Inc.) that hired Kilborn for his new gig at CBS. And Rob Burnett, who's both the executive producer of Letterman's "Late Show" and CEO of Worldwide Pants, said he sees in Kilborn the same seeds of success.
"When Tom (Snyder) told us that he wanted to leave, I actually went to Dave and . . . I said, 'Dave, if you were starting all over again, what would you want to do?' " Burnett said. " 'What kind of a show would you do now that you've done this for 16 years?'
"And he thought about it and he said, 'You know, what I'd like to do today is a show that relies on the host. That starts very small. That doesn't come out with a huge bag of tricks.' And that's really how the whole thing began."
At which point, Burnett and the team at Worldwide Pants started looking around for someone who could pull that off.
"We just found Craig to be funny and the kind of guy that we think can carry that," he said.
That's sort of intimidating talk. And Kilborn joked his way past it.
"CBS and Worldwide Pants did separate research,' he said. "And they came to the same conclusion. Based on my personality, I can carry a show for 12 minutes. And that includes two commercial breaks.
"Rob Burnett has declared us in a scramble mode. So we're in trouble."
Actually, plans for the show have been taking shape for months. Kilborn will operate out of CBS Television City in Los Angeles and, unlike Snyder's show, he will have a small studio audience.
He won't have a band or a sidekick, however.
His set will be a mock home in the Hollywood Hills where this new version of Craig Kilborn purportedly resides.
Kilborn plans to come out, tell a few jokes, do a few video headlines and sit behind a desk when he interviews his guests -- your standard talk-show format. He's looking forward to doing longer interviews than what he did on "The Daily Show," which rarely stretched beyond a maximum of four minutes.
"One of the reasons I wanted to leave 'The Daily Show' was because I felt limited," Kilborn said.
And he will bring along at least a small bag of tricks from "The Daily Show," most notably his often hilarious Five Questions.
The Five Questions are tossed rapid-fire at the guest as Kilborn instantly grades them on their answers.
And he promises that he'll dance from time to time -- something he would do occasionally on "The Daily Show."
"Well, once a month on a Thursday I would dance, dance, dance -- just really awkward. You know a 6-5 geek moving and he shouldn't be dancing," Kilborn said. "But the audience loved it. And during commercials (in) every show they'd say, 'Are you going to dance today?'
"Now, what is it about that? I don't know. It's weird. I like doing it. OK?"
In many respects, 'The Late Late Show" will look a lot like "The Daily Show" did when Kilborn was hosting it.
"Sometimes I'd comment about headlines. Sometimes I would try to dance. Sometimes I would talk about my hair, or if I got a nap that day," he said. "And that's my favorite kind of humor. It goes beyond jokes. I don't know if anyone relates to it, but Rob (Burnett) liked it, so there you are."
But, given his rather more subdued attitude when dealing with the press, don't expect a repeat of the incident that put Kilborn in the headlines in late 1997. He was suspended from "The Daily Show" for a week when Esquire magazine quoted him as making a particularly vulgar, sexist joke about the show's female head writer.
"I regret that incident happened," Kilborn said. "I was being facetious when I said, 'You can print this,' and I think the reporter knew I was being facetious. But, in either case, it's a joke I'm not very proud of.
"It was a bad joke, but we've got plenty more of those coming on March 30th."
While he'll readily admit to being a "smart-aleck," Kilborn maintains that "the mean-spirited thing" he was tagged with "was a little odd."
This sounds a little corny, but I have, actually, kind of a positive attitude," he said. "Like I don't dwell on things, so I'm a smart aleck. I like to make fun but I'm not necessarily out to hurt people, I'm out to make people laugh."