"You can only keep an interview up for four minutes," he joked. "So you're like a premature interrogator, whereas I can go for about an hour."

It took a moment for Gleeson to recover from the barb. But when he did, he went for the jugular: attacking Denton's ratings.

Back in its heyday, Enough Rope would be watched by around 1 million people. But Denton's new series is pulling in numbers less than half that size despite being on a commercial network.

"You want to change euthanasia laws," Gleeson said. "Is that in case you need to put your TV show down?"

The zinger was followed-up with an offer to appear on Interview. When Denton asked why he would have Gleeson on his program, the ABC comedian replied that it would boost his ratings.

"My show rates more than yours," he said. "If I went on there, I could draw a younger audience over to your show."

While past episodes of The Weekly have rated higher than Interview, Seven managed to beat the satirical news program this week. Wednesday's episode of The Weekly  was watched by around 434,000 people across the capital cities, while on Tuesday evening, around 467,000 turned in to Andrew Denton.