Paar often was unpredictable, emotional, and principled. When network censors cut a joke about a "water closet" (a term used for a toilet) from the show's February 10, 1960, broadcast tape before airtime without warning, Paar received national attention by walking off the program the following evening in protest. He did not return until three weeks later, after the network apologized and he was allowed to tell the joke. Paar's emotional nature made the everyday routine of putting together a 105-minute program difficult to continue for more than five years. As a "TV Guide" item put it, he was "bone tired" of the grind, although he later confided to interviewer Dick Cavett that leaving the program was the greatest mistake of his life. He signed off the show for the last time on March 29, 1962, spending much of that final program ripping his enemies in the press, notably gossip columnists Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen.