NEW YORK, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- New York-based talk-show hosts Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien welcomed their scribes back Wednesday, a day after the three-month-old writers strike ended.
Once the strike began Nov. 5, late-night shows immediately went dark and remained so until early last month when most of their hosts, including Stewart and O'Brien, went back on the air without their comedy writers.
During his opening monologue Wednesday night, Stewart, host of the faux TV news show "The Daily Show," quipped: "Words in the prompter? Script on my desk? Vending machine upstairs is out of Funyuns? The writers are back!"
As the audience cheered, Stewart did a little dance in his chair.
Describing his team as "the finest writing staff in the business," Stewart said: "We're so excited. I can't wait to see what they've come up with, it's like Christmas morning."
O'Brien declared at the start of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," that "Today is the day our show gets back to normal."
"I just want to say, personally, it's great to have them back. In fact, they wrote that. That was the first thing they wrote," O'Brien joked, adding they told him: "Say it. Say it or we'll leave again."
