Jimmy Kimmel confronts Larry David over snub mid-interview

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel had a bone to pick with Larry David - and David’s explanation had the audience in stitches.

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel put guest Larry David on the spot during an appearance on his show this week – and David responded in typically candid style.

Kimmel introduced famously grumpy Curb Your Enthusiasm star David to the audience by explaining “he’d rather be home tonight,” and at the end of their lively 15-minute conversation, David proved the host right.

Kimmel ended the interview by posing an “uncomfortable question” of David. He reminded him that he’d been booked as a guest on the show earlier in the year – the first episode after Kimmel had hosted the Academy Awards on March 11.

“We like to have a great guest on Monday night after the Oscars, because it’s a big audience coming in. So we asked you and I was excited you said yes,” he said.

But then, in the weeks before the episode, tragedy struck: David’s lifelong best friend and Curb co-star Richard Lewis died on February 27 following a long period of ill health.

Kimmel told the audience that David’s team then got in touch to say he was in mourning and could no longer do the show – “which I totally understand.”

Larry David, sprung.

Lewis (left) and David in 2009. Picture: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

So Kimmel said he was surprised to bump into David at an afterparty on Oscars night – “smiling broadly, I might add.”

David immediately dissolved into laughter.

“Okay, so you want an explanation?” he asked, before coming clean.

“I used the death of my best friend to get out of doing a show I didn’t want to do in the first place,” he confessed. “It’s very simple.”

Jimmy Kimmel had a bone to pick with Larry.

Peak Larry David, and further proof that Curb Your Enthusiasm was less a comedy series, more a documentary.

Fellow comedian Lewis no doubt would’ve been proud his friend was using his passing as an excuse to wriggle out of his responsibilities.

Even Kimmel conceded it was hard to hold a grudge: “I would expect nothing less,” he said.

David delivered a heartfelt tribute to Lewis after his death at the age of 76 earlier this year. Their crotchety, antagonising friendship was one of the highlights of Curb during its 12 seasons on air.

“Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and for most of my life he’s been like a brother to me,” he wrote in a statement at the time.

“He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him.”