'New face,' who dis? Jay Leno shows off his post-injury mug — and sense of humor — on Kelly Clarkson

Jay Leno is back and cracking jokes after a horrifying accident a few months ago left his entire face on fire.

"This is a brand new face," Leno told daytime diva Kelly Clarkson while appearing on her daytime talkshow The Kelly Clarkson Show. "It is. It's unbelievable. What happened, I was working on a car and I got a face full of gasoline. And it caught fire."

Leno then joked, "I had been eating a Flaming Hot Dorito when I bit into it [and] it set my face on fire."

The 72-year-old former late night host was hospitalized in November after he and longtime friend Dave Killackey were working on the undercarriage of a 1907 White Model G steam car when things got too hot to handle.

"It felt exactly like my face was on fire," Leno told PEOPLE a month later. "Maybe like the most intense sunburn you've ever had, that'd be fair to say." In addition to his face, Leno sustained burn injuries to his neck, chest, hands, and arm.

"I was under the car maybe 10 seconds before Dave pulled me out," he added. "Any longer than that I could have lost my eye."

Despite the accident, Leno's sense of humor remained unscathed. Remarking on the comedian's "new face," Clarkson exclaimed, "You can't tell at all!"

"No, no, you'd think there'd be a zipper here or something but no," he quipped. "Only for the second time in my career am I the new face of comedy."

Pointing out his left ear, Leno then proclaimed, "That's a brand new ear!"

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