Kathy Griffin Recalls Her ‘Clay-Mate’ Experience

Kathy Griffin was on ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ on Tuesday night where she talked about presenting an award at the American Music Awards with ‘American Idol’ Clay Aiken and paying tribute to him on the red carpet. “I wore this crazy outfit with this giant rhinestone necklace that said ‘Clay-Mate’ because that’s what the Clay Aiken fans are called,” she said. “‘Cause I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Clay Aiken’s fans, but they’re very specific, and female, which is weird. [Laughter] And great and wonderful. And so — I’m in trouble, right?”

Griffin then moved on to presenting an award with the singer. “So here’s the thing. I presented with Clay Aiken, who I like to make fun of, yet I’m a fan of,” she explained. “I’m obsessed with him, but I also think he’s kind of funny. And so I did a bit with him where I proposed to him, and he turned me down for some reason. And so the thing that’s great about Clay Aiken which you may not know, he’s a a wonderful singer, very sweet guy. But he has like a team of people around him. So like I had to call literally, there’s something called Team Clay. Yeah, team Clay and they’re bad-ass. Like it’s hard to get to Cclay. They treat him like Ttyson, like he’s this loose cannon where anything can happen. Protect Clay. So I had to run the bit by Clay and Clay is telling me what beats he likes and doesn’t like. It was ridiculous. He’s very protected for obvious reasons, and he was very, very sweet.”