I have to thank @BrisbaneGirl for this one, she told me about it this morning over coffee.
It seem that back in January, Letterman invited the legendary Bill Hicks‘ mother onto the show to formally apologize in public for cutting Bill’s Oct 1993 stand-up routine from the show. Apparently Letterman and his producer were concerned about Bill’s jokes about Jesus. As Bill Hicks’ fans know, he died 5 months later from pancreatic cancer.
Not only did Dave apologize back in January, he played the banned stand-up routine. It’s pretty moving.
Here it is:
Here are the first two parts of the full interview.
I watched this. It was a VERY strange episode of Dave. A lovely thing to do for the mother, I thought. Dave was genuinely humble.
But the original routine was also pretty crass and unfunny. And being unfunny is an acceptable thing to censor on a comedy show. The only thing, in fact. I’m not sure they had to regret the decision so much…