‘You folks enjoy the Osama bin Laden season finale?’

OSAMA bin Laden’s death not only dominated the news but also fuelled a wealth of comic relief, punch lines and unapologetic crowing from American TV’s late-night hosts.

“You seem like you’re in a good mood,” said CBS’s David Letterman, greeting his Late Show audience with a grin. “You folks enjoy the Osama bin Laden season finale?”

Over on NBC, Tonight Show host Jay Leno was all smiles as he declared: “It looks like President Obama has a new campaign slogan: ‘Yes I Did’.”

Jimmy Kimmel on ABC joked: “It was the first Twitter death rumour ever that turned out to be true.”

Late Night host Jimmy Fallon on NBC said: “Bin Laden is dead! Just like the Republicans’ chances in 2012.”

Comedy Central host Jon Stewart said: “I suppose I should be expressing some ambivalence about the targeted killing of another human being. And yet — uhhhh, no!”

Instead, Stewart said, he wanted details. Like, what was the look on bin Laden’s face when he realised “the helicopters overhead were not giving traffic and weather updates”?

Letterman’s Top Ten, “fresh from the State Department”, purported to list bin Laden’s final words, which might have been “I need a house full of Navy Seals like I need a hole in the head”.

The jokes were focused on a handful of basic themes, such as the Navy Seals who took bin Laden out.

According to one comic, “When he heard about it, former president Bush was furious and said ‘Wait a minute — I could have used seals?’.”

Letterman joked: “How about those Navy Seals? They jump out of a helicopter and they break into the compound, and they fire a warning shot into his head.

“Well, the good news is, bin Laden lived to see the royal wedding.”