James Corden nearly revealed Oprah Winfrey's phone number on the air on accident while trying to pitch a hilarious business idea to her.
On his show this week, James spoke about Pharrell Williams' new Miami "lifestyle hotel." After conferring with his band and staff, the late night host decided he wouldn't stay there, but he would stay at an Oprah-designed "lifestyle hotel." His drummer jokingly called it an "O-hotel."
Wanting to tell Oprah his idea, James quickly realized he had a number for the TV queen, but doubted it was the right number. In calling the number on speaker, it went to voicemail and the automated voice began rattling off the number for all the world to hear. James quickly hung up and felt sheepish, all while his staff hysterically laughed at his near phone faux pas. Moments later, he missed a call from a number with no caller ID. He then tried to call Oprah back at the number he had. It worked.
"Look at you! Hey babes," Oprah said.
James quickly began pitching his "O-tel" idea.
"We all have agreed that we would stay in an 'O-tel,'" he said. "And the room service menu is like my favorite things…"
Oprah played along.
"Absolutely! Absolutely!" she replied, "and there would be truffles served with every room service menu, with eggs, truffles with your French fries."
The funnyman requested that his entire staff be able to attend the opening weekend of the fictional hotel for coming up with the idea.
"Why not? We're going to make billions of dollars," Oprah said. "Of course I'll let everybody stay for free."
Following the call, James admitted that he was sweating profusely.
"I'm in bits. I'm in bits. My whole body is sweating," he quipped. "I feel like I swam to Santa Barbara to pitch her an idea that as soon as I said it out loud I was like, 'We haven't thought this through.'"