Howard Jones, the ’80s British pop star, was preparing to tape a performance of Things Can Only Get Better, and celebrity chef Cristiano Petroni had been cooking up meatballs and polenta all day when Jimmy Kimmel found out that he was set to be taken off of ABC two weeks ago.

It’s just after 3pm on September 17 and Kimmel gets a phone call from ABC executives. “They say they want to talk to me. This is unusual. They didn’t even know I was doing a show previous to this,” he joked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert . “I have like five people working in my office with me, so the only private place to go is the bathroom. The ABC executives say, ‘Listen, we want to take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re going to say tonight, and we decided that the best route i

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