Late Night with Conan O'Brien

Late-night talk show hosts David Letterman and Conan O’Brien returned to television tonight sporting scraggly “strike beards".People magazine described them earlier as the “full hairy” beard for Letterman, and a “cinnamon scruff” for O’Brien, who joked he’s been growing his beard since the last writers strike — in 1988.

The beards are the result of both hosts being off for two months as a result of the Writers Guild of America strike. Letterman returned to CBS tonight with his writers after making a separate deal with the WGA; O’Brien also returned, on NBC, but without his writers. Both were joking that they had a lot of down time without the daily production of their shows, and they simply stopped shaving. They kept the beards on the air tonight partly as a show of solidarity with the striking writers, many of whom are on the picket lines looking equally scruffy. The men, at least.