Las Vegas Weekly

April 23, 2009 · 4:21 PM

Mystery surrounds Jay Leno’s hospitalization and cancellation

By Robin Leach

Jay Leno.

Photo: NBC TV

NBC’s The Tonight Show, scheduled for recording at 5:30 p.m. and which was to feature our Luxor headliner Carrot Top -- click HERE for our earlier story today -- has been scrapped due to host Jay Leno’s hospitalization and replaced with a rerun.

It also is unclear if Jay will be able to fly back and forth to Las Vegas this weekend. He is currently scheduled to perform two late-night comedy standup shows in the Terry Fator Theatre at The Mirage tomorrow and Saturday nights.

Jay complained of “not feeling well” about noon today but left his NBC studios in Burbank on his own and checked himself into the nearby Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, according to his longtime representative Dick Guttman.

Jay is suffering from a “mild undisclosed ailment” and was still at the hospital as of 4 p.m. today. One contact of mine in Hollywood feared that he might be suffering from “fatigue from overwork” and hoped it wasn’t a mild heart attack.

Jay will celebrate his 59th birthday Tuesday, and plans call for his run as The Tonight Show host to end May 29 after 17 years. He’ll start a new 10 p.m. nightly show for NBC this fall.

Photo: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com

Holly Madison and Carrot Top keep it casual, it being their clothing.

Recently, Jay hosted a surprise visit by President Obama to his Tonight show and has been giving free comedy shows to recession-ravaged areas of Detroit.

He is known as a tireless workaholic, often putting in 14-hour workdays for his NBC show and then additional hours for his comedy and corporate engagements throughout the country on evenings and weekends.

Jay has told me previously that he never spends the night on his Vegas weekend engagements, preferring to fly back and forth on his own private jet so he can sleep in his own bed at home.

Carrot Top just texted me to say that he had flown into Los Angeles last night and was already at the Burbank studios late this morning working on the debut American Idol sequence. His representative Steve Flynn learned the news of Jay’s hospitalization and show cancellation when he was traveling from the Burbank Airport to the NBC studios.

The pair just returned to Las Vegas at 4:30 p.m. Carrot Top will perform his 8 p.m. show at the Luxor. Jay has loaned him his private jet on previous Tonight Show appearances in order for him to make it back to the Luxor on time when taping has run late and forced him to miss a scheduled flight.

Said Scott: “It’s always very tight, but we’ve never missed a show here -- and that was the plan in place for tonight and the next three Thursdays. Now we are just waiting to hear the outcome and of course wishing Jay a speedy recovery."

There is no confirmation yet of other reports that Jay was taken ill with food poisoning.

Updated @9:03 p.m.: Reports from Jay's staffers in Los Angeles tonight indicate that he is joking with nurses and doctors at the hospital but will stay overnight.

As a result, tomorrow's Tonight Show also has been canceled and will be replaced with another rerun. NBC officials say Jay will be back to work Monday.

Tomorrow's cancellation indicates that his weekend late-night Mirage comedy shows will be postponed. "It's wait and see," one MGM Mirage employee told me tonight. "We do not yet know if the show goes on or if he cancels the trip. We'll know in the morning."

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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