Late-night talk-show hosts Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel say they're going to get around the problem of booking guests during the television writers' strike by appearing on each other's show.

Leno announced Sunday that he and Kimmel will do the swapping on Thursday.

Talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, seen in 2006, will appear on Jay Leno's Tonight Show and Leno will return the favour this Thursday on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
(Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press)

Kimmel will venture to Leno's studio in Burbank, Calif., and Leno will appear on Kimmel's show, which is taped in Hollywood. Both shows are taped the same day they air.

"There are only a few people in the world that know how tough this job is," Leno said. "Jimmy is one of them. It will be fun to discuss who's a good guest, who's a difficult guest and everything else that comes with sitting behind these desks."

"If Jay and I can come together and guest on each other's shows, then surely there is hope for peace in the Middle East," responded Kimmel, who recently lashed out at the Writers Guild of America (WGA) for picketing both Leno's Tonight Show and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Kimmel says the union is being too harsh, especially since both men were paying the salaries of their non-striking staff during their hiatus.

Leno recently raised the ire of the WGA, which has been on strike since Nov. 5 over residuals paid to writers for material appearing online and on DVDs.

The WGA admonished Leno for writing his own monologue, saying that's against strike rules, while Leno has said the guild's own contract makes allowances for this.

The late-night talk shows returned on air Wednesday. Only David Letterman's Late Show and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, both run by the independent company Worldwide Pants, got their writers back in a separate deal negotiated during the holidays.

The Screen Actors Guild has directed its members to appear on those two shows, and says it considers appearances on the other talk shows as crossing the picket line.

Comedy talkshows to return

Leno's only other announced future guest this week is Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Monday night.

Jimmy Kimmel Live will feature reality show stars Kathy Griffin and Scott Baio, and the rock band Velvet Revolver this week.

Actors Tom Hanks, Lucy Liu and Morgan Freeman will be on Letterman's show this week.

Meanwhile, on Monday, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and TheColbert Report with Stephen Colbert are returning without their writers. The shows' hosts will have a tougher time since half of their airtime is devoted to monologues or sketches.

Neither Stewart nor Colbert, whose shows air weeknights back to back on Comedy Central, has indicated how they'll cope.

Both hosts are WGA members and therefore banned from writing their own material. The two shows also depend on politicians as guests, and few politicos are willing to cross a picket.

With files from the Associated Press