Just minutes before the start of Piers Morgan's 9pm show tonight host tweeted that he'd be interviewing Sheen LIVE.

Literally, four minutes...apparently the Piers people weren't entirely sure he'd show up until he arrived.

Minutes later Charlie Sheen appeared on set looking just as bad as he did this morning on Today. Presumably much to the furor of ABC's 20/20 who already got scooped by NBC's Today show earlier today.

However for those expecting (or hoping for) totally unhinged behavior on live TV, Sheen announced in the first minutes that he was not bringing the "crazy."

And in the context of some other behavior this week, he was reasonably calm and conciliatory, though, obviously, far from well.

In response to Morgan's asking, Sheen insisted that he was sober and pulled out a drug report to prove it though he noted "I can understand why they had to intervene when they did."

He also insisted he'd never "hit a woman...women are for hugging and caressing" [cue View segment tomorrow] and that he'd never had drugs around when his kids were in the house.

When pressed Sheen also backtracked on some statements from this morning saying he didn't actually want a pay raise. "Why did you say you did," asked Piers. Sheen: "I don't know. [Hands in the air.] He's on crack."

He also pushed back at criticism that some of his remarks had been anti-Semitic: "Chuck Lorre calls me by my real name Carlos Esteves a lot. I saw [his Jewish name] in a vanity card, used it, and all of the sudden the world is burning around me."

Considering how much airtime Sheen has given himself in the past 24 hours it's likely the bigger question to come out of tonight is how did Morgan do?

First impressions: Morgan may get some push back tomorrow for being too chummy with Sheen -- though it's nearly impossibly not to feel some sympathy for a man in such obvious distress (that said, closing out by declaring Sheen to be the "Che Guevara of Hollywood at the moment" was probably overdoing it just a tad...to put it mildly.)

He didn't (video below). And the second half of the interview was much tougher, touching on a lot of harder questions about Sheen's relationship with his children and family. Not that his answers were in any sense comforting, but they were at least direct answers.

Again: Huge get for Morgan. Anyone on TV would have killed to have Sheen walk on for an hour of live TV; a number of people on Twitter are comparing it to Leno's Hugh Grant interview. Either way this is sure to put Morgan on a bit of a different map going forward.