Comedian Jay Leno appeared before camera wearing an eye-patch and with the left half of his face black and blue after he tripped while going down a 60-foot hill over the weekend.
The 74-year-old former “Tonight Show” host told Inside Edition that he also broke his wrist and lost a fingernail in the fall, while the entire left side of his body was “all black and blue.”
But he assured the audience that his eye would be fine. “I’m not worried about it,” he said, after lifting his eye-patch to reveal his eye, which was swollen shut.
Leno said the accident happened just before he was set to do a stand-up comedy show on Saturday. He was staying at a Hampton Inn about 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh and decided to have dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Leno didn’t have a car at his disposal, so when he heard that he’d have to walk around a mile and a half down the road to reach the restaurant just down the hill, he decided to take an off-road shortcut instead.
“I said, well the hill doesn’t look that steep, let me … Doh!” he told the camera. The next moment, he was tumbling down the hill.
“Well, I hit a bunch of rocks, it was 60 feet,” Leno said, laughing.
Rocks notwithstanding, Leno was unfazed and performed as scheduled. The famous workaholic didn’t report to hospital until after he’d returned to Los Angeles the following day, he told TMZ in a separate interview.
“It’s not that big a deal,” he said, half of his face looking as blue as his suit.
Fans can rest assured that Leno has no intention of canceling any of his upcoming shows.
Leno’s long career in showbiz hasn’t taken the spark out of his comedy, which has received rave reviews.
“From the time he hit the stage, Jay Leno told hysterical jokes that anyone would find incredibly funny,” one person wrote on a Ticketmaster review page. “We almost fell off our chairs we were laughing so hard.”
“He is a master of storytelling and clever comedy and he did not disappoint with his fun and funny sense of humor,” another wrote. “At 74 the man has not lost a beat.”
Leno has been through a string of accidents in recent years, the latest being the least of them.
In November 2022, Leno was treated at LA’s Grossman Burn Center in November 2022 for injuries to his face, chest, and hands that required skin grafts, following a fire in his home garage in Burbank.
The avid automobile collector had been working underneath one of his vehicles when a fire ignited.
A few months later, in January 2023, Leno told the Las Vegas Review that he’d broken a collarbone, two ribs, and cracked his kneecaps following a motorcycle accident.
He told the outlet that he was very happy to be married to his long love, Mavis, who is battling dementia.