Lucky crowd: Jon Stewart makes surprise return to standup after unannounced

The satirical host opened the show with a discussion of his reportedly “secret” White House meetings with President Barack Obama. “Jon and I would come to it from a different place and comment on it from a different place”, he said, explaining that the perspective of a 52-year-old Jewish man from New York would naturally not always line up with that of a 31-year-old son of a black mother and white father from South Africa.

(March 2010) Then still a major draw on Fox News Channel, Glenn Beck was lampooned by Stewart in a virtuosic impersonation of the conservative champion, complete with Beck’s theatrics, byzantine pronouncements and, of course, many blackboards as he battled his volatile emotions: “As I look around at all the truly random things that I scribbled, I promised myself that I would cry”.

Stewart was visibly annoyed by the Politico “exposé” which claimed he was invited to the White House in stealth on a couple of occasions to hear the administrations “side of the story”.

Stewart said Obama called his office twice to see if he’d meet with him in Washington. “And I did”.

The biggest change when Trevor Noah takes over hosting duties on The Daily Show from the retiring Jon Stewart in September will be, obviously, the face behind the desk.

“It wasn’t really that big a deal”, Stewart said. “It was a round table meeting with the President, Elvis – still alive – Minister Farrakhan and the Alien 51 alien”.

“It was openly listed, and I went through the normal White House entrance like everybody else, and I told my mom”, Stewart said of the meetings. The article said Stewart had met with the president in 2011 and again previous year. In fact, Stewart took the meetings because he thought, if you say no to the president, “Who the f- knows what would happen?” They also talked about fixing the VA and improving the healthcare website, apparently over the best salmon Stewart has ever had.