A moment of TV history: Actor Hugh Grant, following his arrest after being caught in a parked car with a prostitute, makes his first post-bust appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
This happened on July 10, 1995 and it gave Leno his first ratings "win" over his competition, David Letterman. The next morning, a CBS exec told the press it was a one-night-only fluke that would never happen again. Leno then beat Letterman for the next eleven years. This led to a belief that somehow, Grant's appearance made that streak happen. In fact, Jay had been gaining steadily on Dave in the months before and surely would have passed him before long. Grant just moved the date up a bit. (There have been plenty of nights since when either Dave or Jay had a monster rating because of a one-time-only event…Dave's return from heart surgery, for instance. Those bumps in the Nielsens never last more than a night or two.)
Here's the segment. I thought it was a fine bit of damage control on the part of Mr. Grant. I don't think most of America cares what celebs do in that vein, and probably figure some of their faves do that kind of thing (or worse) and don't get caught. But they might have cared if Grant had tried to weasel and blame others and not merely admitted he did something wrong…
