Jay Leno Jokes About His “Brand New Face” After Garage Fire

30 years after Jay Leno took over as host of The Tonight Show, the legendary comedian jokes he’s”the new face of comedy” for a second time after suffering severe burns from a gasoline fire. In November, the former late night host, 72, reported an accident in his garage led to “serious” third-degree burns. Leno, a classic car enthusiast and host of CNBC’s Jay Leno’s Garage, spent nine days in a burn center and underwent two skin graft surgeries after his face “caught on fire” while working on a clogged fuel line in the undercarriage of a 1907 White Steam car. 

“This is a brand new face. It is. It’s unbelievable,” Leno said Wednesday during an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “What happened, I was working on a car and I got a face full of gasoline. And it caught fire.” Leno then quipped, “I had been eating a Flaming Hot Dorito when I bit into it [and] it set my face on fire.”

More seriously, Leno explained that he suffered “injuries, all third-degree burns, it was pretty bad. It was pretty bad.” When Clarkson remarked that “you can’t tell at all,” Leno quipped, “You think there’d be a zipper or something, but no. Only for the second time in my career am I the new face of comedy. I got it once in the ’80s, and now I get it again. That’s a brand new ear!”

How Did Jay Leno Get Burned?

Leno previously detailed his accident in an interview with PEOPLE, revealing he was treated for burns he sustained on his face, neck, chest, hands, and left arm. If his friend, Dave Killackey, hadn’t pulled him out from under the car within 10 seconds, Leno said, “I could have lost my eye.” 

“I was underneath [the car], trying to unclog [the fuel lin], and so I said, blow some air through the line,” Leno told Today in December. Leno recalled there was a “poof,” and “then suddenly I got a face full of gas, and then the pilot light jumped, and my face caught on fire.”

“I said to my friend, I said, ‘Dave I am on fire here,’” Leno remembered, with Killackey adding that it was a “wall of fire” and he “couldn’t even see [Leno’s] face.” 

“I grabbed him by the head and pulled his head into my chest,” Killackey said. “It was horrific. It was a scary thing. It doesn’t take a genius to say, ‘call 911.’”