Want to be the funniest kid in the whole wide world or, at the very least, in your class? Jay Leno has the answer for you.
AP reports that the NBC ?Tonight? show host has come out with a new book called, appropriately enough, ?How to Be the Funniest Kid in the Whole Wide World (or Just in Your Class).?
Leno and his chief ?Tonight? show writer, Joe Medeiros, wrote hundreds of kid-tested, kid-approved jokes for the book, which also offers advice to young people aspiring to be comedians.
?I think this is cheaper and more effective than Ritalin,” Leno told AP on Friday. “A lot of kids just have a lot of energy and are bouncing off the walls. So why not channel it? Have them write some jokes and put a show together, get some of that energy out.”
Leno advises kids hoping to get into his line of work to speak in public as often as possible, saying it’s hard to tell jokes in front of an audience if you’re not comfortable being in front of an audience in the first place.
After writing the jokes, Leno and Medeiros tested them out with children of young staff members.
“Something like, ‘What does Homer Simpson use to make bread? Dough!’” Leno said. “Kids really think that’s funny.”
Leno is donating proceeds from the book, published this month by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, to Concerns of Police Survivors Inc., which benefits the families of law enforcement officers killed on the job.
“I’m in a business where people throw money at you,” he said. “They’re in a business where people shoot at you. It’s just a way of saying thanks.”
Leno has hosted ?The Tonight Show with Jay Leno? for more than 13 years and has received his own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
