"Coming from a man sporting that facial hair!"

"What did he just say about my hair?!?"

Back in December 2005, Bill Shatner appeared as Lucifer himself in Comedy Central's Last Laugh '05 (basically a comedic look back at the year). As the Lucifer skit was still being rehearsed, Bill Shatner was interviewed by a Comedy Central reporter. During the interview, Shats ended up making a serious point about his prognosis for humanity and the need to act on environmental issues:

"I think we have a generation...of the...growing toxicity - unless we do something about it. That's the clarion call: do something about it and maybe we have longer."

To which the reporter responded:

"That's very ominous coming from a man sporting that facial hair!"

Watch the exchange below:

Last Laugh
Backstage - William Shatner
www.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

Now, this is likely one of those cases of unwitting and inadvertent irony. And it genuinely appears that the reporter was one of the few that had no knowledge of Bill Shatner's hair and the various broad taboos that apply to the subject, lest a moment like this one come about. Or perhaps it was a momentary lapse. Of course the subject was facial hair, but the interviewer was standing next to a man covered in more glued-on prosthetics than is considered wise for any man. By the way, we have been studying if it's something in the glue that has given Bill Shatner his age-defying endurance (he's currently learning to fly a helicopter).

Bill Shatner is evidently somewhat surprised by the interviewer's comment. Perhaps he is merely taken by the tangent from environmentel issues to mocking Shats' glued-on facial hair. But can there be much doubt that Bill Shatner also senses the irony of the situation? If only one word - the word "facial" - was missing from that interviewer's comment, he would have said "This coming from a man sporting that hair!" You get the sense that Bill Shatner did a slight double-take, making sure he heard it right, before turning just a little bit bashful.

You can watch Bill Shatner's performance at Last Laugh '05 here. Somewhere out there there is a cool photo of Shatner's Lucifer surrounded by a load of very attractive women - if anyone out there can locate it, please let us know.