What happens when you have a writers strike and you need to fill an hour's worth of late night time?
For one thing, you grow a beard over the preceding nine weeks and then have a pair of barbers come on the air and shave it off; takes about seven or eight minutes of airtime, and the attention is priceless. (Though, really, watching someone getting shaved - even Letterman - is about as exciting as watching them comb their hair; thrills!) Last night, the beard finally went.
Dave did this about twenty years ago too - the opening gag of Hal Gurnee's classic "Network Time Killers" routines that helped fill hours of program time while the writers walked the streets below. Hal also got a tailor to measure Dave for a suit. I wonder if that's next? (Thanks to Mangoface247 for this clip).