Hi,
Bit ... I come from the Goons, Michael Bentine, High Comedy, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and a lot of English comedy. I even was not a Monty Python fan in the early days, albeit I have started to enjoy some of their stuff, but half of it is boring! Grimms were better. Eric Idle by himself even better. Neil Innes by himself superior ... With the Americans I love are Ernie Kovakz, Tom Lehrer, and Spike Jones, and Jonathan Winters. Dave Letterman is not a talented comedian like all these folks were that wrote most of their own material.
Dave is given a lot of accolades and credit because he was a cash-cow for the network that was making around 15 to 20 million dollars per week for the network, and that made him a "star". The media in America is merely honoring his ability to keep the audiences going with being silly and his slapstick comedy and now thanking him for bringing in the money!