David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel discuss the late night wars

CBS has released a preview of tonight's "Late Show with David Letterman" featuring guest Jimmy Kimmel. The two hosts chat about Jay Leno (thanks to TV MoJoe for the tip). Here's a sample of their repartee:

David Letterman: Boy, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed your participation in the Jay Leno scandal. That was--

Jimmy Kimmel: Oh, thank you. And I do want to say to you, thanks for inviting me to your Super Bowl party.

DL: We didn't have enough room. Oprah had final say on the guest list. It was interesting, I've known Jay a long, long time, and it just got to be fun. It really got to be a lot of fun.

JK: It did. I would like to keep it going. We had him, we were drowning him, and you threw him a life saver during the Super Bowl.

DL: I think we can still fire it up. You did an entire show as Jay.

JK: I did. It's fun to be Jay. It's easier. You should try it. But Jay, I dressed up as Jay.

DL: You guys are friends.

JK: We're very close (laughs). During the strike, we spoke on the phone. He would call and give me advice and I would agree with it or whatever. I imitated him, I dressed up, I had the chin. He called me the next day... Jay said, "It's in the news, it's funny, it's funny"... I felt relieved that he thought it was funny and then an hour later they called and asked me to do his show.

DL: You went on and did the 10 at 10.

JK: He asked me 10 questions about nothing and I asked him 10 questions about stealing Conan's job from him. I did not get a call the next day.

DL: What I loved about it, it was fun, it was funny and nobody got hurt. The only people that got hurt were NBC. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars. We don't care about NBC. Jay didn't get hurt, you didn't get hurt, Conan didn't get hurt, I certainly didn't get hurt, and it was just a lot of fun.

JK: I think Conan might disagree. I don't think Jay was happy because he went on the Oprah show and said I sucker punched him. He's always running to tattle to Oprah whenever something happens. I didn't feel like I did sucker punch him, but then I looked it up in the dictinary and it turns out I did.

DL: This is what it used to be when we would all be at the Comedy Store and we were all insulting and attacking one another. We couldn't have had a better time at it. To me, that's what it was reminiscent of. It was a great deal of fun.