Jay Leno (who celebrated his 20th year on NBC May 25; The Tonight Show airs weeknights at 11:35pm) shares the 25 things you don’t know about him with Us Weekly.
1. My first onscreen kiss was with Fran Drescher.
2. I don’t drink alcohol — mostly because I am afraid I’d like it.
3. I knew football wasn’t for me in junior high, when I couldn’t get the helmet to fit my head.
4. The fastest I have gone in a car is 207 miles per hour.
5. I don’t own any shorts.
6. Massages aren’t for me.
7. My wife [Mavis, 65] and I have been married for 32 years.
8. No kids, but we have a cat.
9. I am somewhat dyslexic.
10. My favorite comedian growing up was Jack Benny.
11. I am a contributing editor for the London Sunday Times.
12. My draft number for the [Vietnam] War was 273.
13. I don’t like soup. It seems like a way for people to screw you out of a meal.
14. I am pretty sure I know the words to almost every song from the mid-’50s to the late ’60s.
15. Three people in my family attended West Point.
16. I flunked out of Bentley School of Accounting.
17. I still don’t know how I graduated from Emerson College.
18. I’m not sure why, but I used to smoke a pipe.
19. Growing up, I just wanted to make my mom laugh. She’s the reason I became a comedian.
20. After moving to L.A., I was picked up twice for vagrancy.
21. At 16, I worked at a Ford dealership washing cars.
22. My favorite book is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
23. My mother came to America [from Scotland] by herself at 11.
24. I do 160 stand-up gigs a year.
25. At age 7, I saw Loving You with Elvis Presley. The girls went crazy and I thought, This business is for me.
