Jay Leno’s Garage

Season 1 BBC Brit (*120) 21:00 Reality

Comedian Jay Leno is famous for three things. Hosting The Tonight Show from 1992 to 2014. His prominent jaw. And his love of cars. And now motorhead fans are getting all three bundled into one show: Jay Leno’s Garage (2015-current), where Jay and his celeb friends talk cars, drive cars and clean cars.

1 The 67-year-old has 286 vehicles in his collection – 169 cars and 117 motorbikes. He doesn’t have a favourite but Jay admits to having a soft spot for his two steam cars and his Chrysler Turbine – there are only nine in existence. 2 So how does he afford to service them all? Jay’s worth an estimated $350 million (R4.7 billion) and he says he hasn’t touched his Tonight salary (over $2 million a month). Instead, he and his family live off the money he made from his stand-up comedy shows. 3 He actually met his wife Mavis at one of his routines; she was in the audience “and I couldn’t take my eyes off her,” Jay says. They married in 1980 and agreed not to have kids, giving Jay time to focus on his comedy and letting Mavis focus on her charity initiatives. 4 Jay used to pay bar owners $50 to let him perform and most paid him back as the patrons laughed so much. Jay’s also an author and wrote two 5 kids books – If Roast Beef Could Fly (2004) and 2005’s How To Be The Funniest Kid In The Whole Wide World (Or Just In Your Class). 6 In his 1996 autobiography Leading With My Chin, Jay revealed that his large jaw is due to a genetic disorder called Mandibular Prognathism, where his lower jaw outgrows the upper. Jay can have corrective surgery but he jokes that “I don’t deal well with pain and the healing would be prolonged”.