• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

Greg Gutfeld’s guest appearance last week with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show” was a demonstration of why Gutfeld has come so far and grown so much in ratings and notoriety on his Fox News shows.

Gutfeld, 60, hosts the comedic talk show “Gutfeld!” nightly at 10 p.m. Eastern and has a seat at the roundtable on the weekday discussion show “The Five,” seen at 5 p.m. Eastern.

In his appearance on “Fallon” last week, Gutfeld did what great late-night guests are supposed to do -- tell funny stories, make spontaneous quips that hit their targets, avoid serious topics, stay focused, alert, energized and enthusiastic -- in short, entertain.

Fallon was obviously thrilled with how the Gutfeld segment was turning out. Late-night hosts crave this kind of guest. 

They feed off the guest’s energy in the knowledge that the guest is helping to make their show the best that it can be.

To put it in comedy terms, Gutfeld killed. The man is no novice. He has had comedic talk shows on Fox News since 2011 when he first joined “The Five” after a career as a writer and editor at a succession of magazines -- Prevention, Men’s Health, Stuff and Maxim.

That information came out of Fallon and Gutfeld’s lengthy, 11-minute segment, in which Fallon invited Gutfeld to reveal a little bit about his story.

Among other things, Gutfeld said he had been fired from a bunch of his past jobs, and every dismissal turned into an opportunity to do something better.

The segment started with a raucous story from approximately 15 years ago in which Gutfeld ran into Fallon at a dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen that might not have even been a licensed establishment.

Gutfeld’s description of the evening they spent together was vibrant and hilarious, and Fallon soaked up every word of it.

In fact, in the entire segment, Fallon was largely silent as Gutfeld talked and talked. It was a tribute to Fallon, who had the instinct to keep quiet when his guest was more than holding his own and making for a sensational segment.

Gutfeld’s appearance on “The Tonight Show” was not exactly an example of one late-night star visiting another one, although it was not too long ago that the one-hour “Gutfeld!” qualified as a late-night show airing at 11 p.m. to midnight Eastern on Fox News.

In that time slot, “Gutfeld!” competed at least partially with “Tonight” until 2023, when Fox News moved “Gutfeld!” to prime time at 10 p.m. when the network remade the lineup after the exit of Tucker Carlson.

Not surprisingly, the “Gutfeld!” show is decidedly on-brand for Fox News -- pro-Trump and vehemently anti-left. 

The show features Gutfeld in the host’s chair with four other participants arranged in a circle. 

Two of the chairs are occupied by a rotation of guests, while the other two are usually occupied by regulars Kat Timpf and the one-named ex-wrestler Tyrus.

The “Gutfeld!” show can be savagely funny and, in the case of its treatment of Joe Biden and other prominent democrats, just savage.

“Gutfeld!” averaged 3.16 million viewers over the five days of Monday, July 28, through Friday, August 1. By contrast, “Fallon” averaged 1.13 million.