Don Rickles. What can you say? 60 years in show biz. 82 years old and still runs rings around stand-ups pumping Red Bulls at the Improv. Okay, maybe he moves a little slower, but with aim as deadly as his, who cares?

You’d think that sixty years later, with a million-gag repertoire in that huge hairless skull, Rickles would be coasting. But he worked this show! He insulted the band, the audience, Jimmy – anyone in range. And they loved it. Were some of the jokes creaky? You bet. But if you don’t like this one, there’ll be another along any second. Ba-rum-bum!!

Rickles’ political incorrectness is his stock in trade and still occasionally seems shocking in these sensitive times. Mr. Warmth, however, can get away with anything. When Jimmy noted that JK Live was approaching its 1000th episode, Rickles reflected on the show: “Once in a while when I take a shot at the wife, I use it for a nightlight.” There were other jokes The Guest Whisperer won’t even repeat!

Since Kimmel is in the middle of his concert stunt run, the audience is mostly young enough to get carded. However, when Rickles trotted out an old gag from the ‘60s – “Look at this kid – Halloween’s over!” – both the 19-year-old target and the rest of the audience were falling over. He did get sincere for a second, thanking Jimmy for hosting the Television Academy event featuring his new DVD (“Mr. Warmth – The Don Rickles Project”).

All in all when it comes to talk show appearances, the man is a class act in a class by himself.

Okay, all the tips and guidelines and inside secrets we’ve been espousing here at The Guest Whisperer – you can just throw them out. The rulebook for being a smash hit as a talk show guest has just been rewritten and it goes like this:

1. Be the hottest new three-brother boy band on the scene, or at least be at the top of Disney/ABC/Hollywood Records teen-celeb hit machine.

2. Pack the audience with tons of tween and teen fans jacked up on female hormones, thereby……sending your host’s youth demographic through the roof.

3. Be excruciatingly cute, yet apparently unaffected by fame.

4. Let that straightman host have some fun and be your guide through the screaming twists and turns of female fandom, because hey you have no fear of the competition on that stage – those adoring eyes, and pounding pulses are there to see YOU, right?

5. Secure that you’ve locked your target demo down tight, proceed to expand your crossover appeal with bite-sized multi-generational stories like your visit to the White House Easter Egg Hunt (“The President looked at my feet and said ‘I like them shoes, Joe – I gotta get me a pair.’”) and how Barry Gibb of the BeeGees is giving you career advice because his daughter is a gonzo fan.

6. Top it off by letting Jimmy play ringmaster to a wicked exclusive concert that has the audience screaming the audio meter off the hook and then throw in an encore that plays straight through the credits.

Come to think of it – these ARE the rules we’ve been touting: play to your strengths, connect with your host, keep your stories clever and funny and short, and let the audience feel they’re seeing something extra they wouldn’t get at your concert, in your movie, or on your TV show.

Now, if you could just get yourself a boy band, you’d be set!

Roseanne Barr has had her ups and downs. She’s been in and out, and rarely wanders far from controversy. Through it all, she has been a remarkably reliable talk show guest and interview subject, as demonstrated by her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. While Roseanne plugged her ongoing show at the Sahara in Las Vegas, it’s impossible to confine her to a single subject – or even a mere half dozen. She took flight on parenting, joke writing, psychic abilities, politics and her unreasonable fear of Siegfried and Roy.

Simultaneously a celebrity and an ordinary Joe (or Jane), when she relates how she went gaga at seeing Wayne Newton’s mansion, she is the star-struck fan in us all. Yet with her explanation of why she loves Obama, but supports Hillary – “Ho’s before bro’s” is her philosophy – she is dancing on the edge of talk show boundaries.

She can talk about mundane things, that from other guests would have us fidgeting in our seats, because with Roseanne, we know something outrageous is just around the corner. You sense both 50-something housewives and college students respond when she said she gets revenge on her daughters by giving bad advice to her grandchildren. (“Go ahead, poop in your pants. You’re only five!”) She pulled the audience in by giving them sly looks that say “You know what I mean” – looks that slip right by Jimmy. Even so, both she and Jimmy were wonderfully generous in their set-ups for each other: equal opportunity quipsters. The final result was a show segment that was endlessly funny and consistently genuine. (Hey, does anyone else notice that if you close your eyes when Roseanne is talking, you could swear Barbara Walters is in the room?!

Thandie Newton is tiny. You may not think so, when she’s paired with vertically challenged leading men like Tom Cruise, but she is a mere slip of a thing, which became apparent when she walked onto the set of The Late Late Show. Yet diminutive as she is, she was almost big enough to stand up to the comic onslaught that is Craig Ferguson. You have to throw out some of the usual talk show rules when dealing with Craig, whose inventive mind and natural-amphetamine bloodstream keep quips flying at supersonic speeds. Perhaps that’s why the producers chose to show her clip from Run Fatboy Run before Thandie came out: any clip would have fallen flat had it been shown after the whirlwind Craig put Newton through.

Considering what she was up against, Thandie played this situation beautifully. Rather than coming on as a performer, she showed up as the witty and accommodating guest – sophisticated, but unafraid of dropping the occasional rude bomb about plastic surgery. Although she was hardly shy and certainly vocal, she wisely refused to play competitively with Craig. Instead she raised the game of reacting to an art form, amplifying the impact of her host’s humor and winning the admiration of the audience at the same time. She treated Craig like one would handle a rambunctious and outrageous friend, both calling him on his naughtiness and surrendering to the fun of it. When he launched a running gag on Tom Cruise’s height, she gently slapped him down while still going with the laughs. A splendid balancing act that demonstrated some of the ruling principles of guest-dom: research your host well, but remain flexible so you can steer with the prevailing winds. Remember that there is more than one way to make a good impression.