Video: Huckabee crosses picket line

The only people in America who are better at coming up with one-liners than Hollywood screenwriters are politicians. And, in case you have not noticed, they are not on strike.

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee crossed a Writers Guild of America picket-line to rescue NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno as it returned from a forced two-month break on Wednesday night without its 19 striking writing staff.

An energised Leno revived his long-ago skills at improv, cracking jokes with a spontaneity seldom seen on his normally carefully scripted show.

He even attempted his usual monologue of topical jokes, without his writers' help. "I am doing what I did the day I started. I write jokes and then I wake my wife up and say, 'Honey, is this funny?'" he explained. "So if this monologue does not work, it's my wife's fault."

Huckabee, however, was even funnier - perhaps because, unlike Leno, he has had plenty of opportunity to practice in front of live audiences in recent weeks in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses.

The former Baptist minister reminded viewers that he came from the Arkansas town of Hope, like former President Bill Clinton, who moved away to Hot Springs as a child. Noting that Mr Clinton always mentioned Hope as his hometown, he observed: "It might not sound right to say, 'I believe in a place called Hot Springs'."

Huckabee turned out to be a spectacular guest. He even strummed his electric guitar with the band in a fleeting moment that recalled Mr Clinton's own saxophone-playing on the Arsenio Hall show in his first presidential campaign.

Plus Huckabee has gone on an Oprah Winfrey-style diet in which the presidential contender shed 110 lbs. Weight-loss is always an audience favourite. He said he started the diet when his doctor had told him he had less than 10 years to live. "I decided I needed an alternative exit strategy," he quipped.

The contrast with the arch-rival "Late Show with David Letterman" in the same time-slot on the CBS network could not have been more stark.

Letterman returned to the airwaves with his writers after cutting a separate deal with the union, but his writing team seemed to be too hung over from New Year's Eve to do much work.

Instead, Letterman's show became a bad-tempered "public service announcement" for the strikers, with director Nora Ephron joining other scribes to deliver a sarcastic "Top Ten" list of the writers' demands.

The No. 1 demand, and therefore meant to be the funniest, was: "Producers must immediately remove their heads from their asses." Ho-ho!

Letterman was not helped by the fact that he had grown a "strike beard" during the two-month stoppage that made him look like a curmudgeonly grandfather.

Fortunately, Letterman and his writers were themselves rescued by their unscripted celebrity guest, the comic Robin Williams.

Williams sparkled – further testament to the power of improv. Like all good humour, his jokes hinted at the unspoken truth. The jest that hit hardest was his greeting to Letterman: "My God man, you've aged!... Happy New Year, Grandpa."

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