The truth comes out…
During a recent appearance on comedian Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, Jay Leno spoke out on claims he’s linked to the mob.
The former Tonight Show host clarified a floating rumor that injuries to his face were from a beating by the mob due to owed gambling debts.
In November, Leno told Inside Edition that he broke his wrist, sustained significant bruising on his face and body and lost a fingernail after falling down a rocky 60-foot hill outside his hotel.
Maher asked Leno about the rumors, to which Jay responded, “Well, I like the idea that they wouldn’t just take one of my cars for the gambling debt.”
While Leno himself isn’t “mobbed up” the comedian did remember an encounter with the mafia when he was starting out his comedy career.
“I was pretty smart,” he said. “I remember years ago I was at Catch a Rising Star, and I was onstage, and this guy – a mob guy – comes up to me afterwards, and he goes, ‘Hey, you’re a funny kid. You’re a funny kid.’
“He takes $100, and he puts it in my pocket. I say, ‘Oh, thank you.’ I say, ‘Look, I don’t mean any disrespect but, you know, give it to the church or something… I’m OK, but thank you.’ And he says to me, ‘You know, you’re a smart kid. You don’t take money from people like me. That’s smart.’ And nobody ever bothered me again.”
While Leno admitted he never had any trouble, he witnessed the mob “kick the crap out of comics left and right” for being a “wise ass” onstage.
In 2023, Leno also sustained significant injuries due to a motorcycle accident.
Leno sustained two broken ribs, broke his kneecaps and a collarbone after being clotheslined while riding his motorcycle through a parking lot.
“I turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot, and unbeknownst to me, some guy had a wire strung across the parking lot but with no flag hanging from it,” Leno told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“I didn’t see it until it was too late. It just clotheslined me and, boom, knocked me off the bike. The bike kept going, and you know how that works out.”
In 2022, the comedian was also injured in a gasoline fire. He later was treated for third-degree burns to his face and hands. (RELATED: Jay Leno Was Hospitalized Months After Gas Fire)
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Thank God Jay is OK. He’s taken some brutal hits in the past few years.
BS.
You don’t dismiss a, “gift” from an older Italian man, nevermind a mobster. Leno is a Mook and full of it.
Growing up around and putting in just under 40 years in NY Union construction, I can say confidently that the, “Old Timer” would have, at the VERY least, rolled the yard into a ball, threw it on the ground and said something like, “You better pick it up, Kid, before someone else does.”