406 - I guess you had to be there

Dave, I've been a fan since your late-night debut in February 1982. I've weathered a lot of your highs and lows, and won't even go into the nightly repetition of jokes. But there's something you've been doing for a while now, and I'd like you to stop. When you "warm up" your audience with a friendly Q & A before taping the show, leave it there. Nobody at home knows what you're talking about, why you're cutting to some random person in the audience, and why you're devoting monologue time and entries on the Top Ten list to them. You have a TV audience of several million, and these are inside jokes that only the few hundred people in your live audience will ever get. Please do the math.

One of these people has a goofy personal story that we couldn't care less about. The others are audience members.