TELEVISION - June 28, 1991

But He Got the Last Laugh: Jay Leno, Johnny Carson’s heir apparent, can remember when Carson didn’t think he was funny. “Johnny saw me at a comedy club and said I wasn’t very good,” Leno recalls in an interview with the Washington Post. “He said, ‘You’ve got an attitude, you’ve got a funny way about you but you don’t have any jokes.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re just not right for the show, not very good.’ ” Leno says he was stung by Carson’s criticism but improved his act . . . by studying Carson’s style.