In February 1999 I asked Conan fans and Neeha readers to send me in some questions that they might have had for Conan. And so, armed with a bunch of these (not the rude ones, sorry, but there are some things I won’t do)... I spoke to Conan on the phone on the morning of Wednesday February 17th... Was I nervous? You bet! I was as floopy as you’ll ever find me, but a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do… Here’s how it went.

I asked Conan to start off by telling us how a typical day for him would go.

My typical day starts usually with me getting nervous and crying. Then I get over that and I come into work. And I work out, that’s how I’m so muscular, I’m sure you’ve noticed that... I work out and then I come upstairs and I start having meetings about the different guests. Sometimes they tell me "oh I talked to this guest on the phone and they have nothing to say" sometimes they tell me "this guest is brilliant, this guest is great, it’s gonna be fun". Then we talk about the comedy and we go over things and we just do that until about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Then at 2 o’clock we go downstairs and rehearse... At rehearsal, it’s like the show; we rehearse the comedy pieces that we do, me, and Andy and Max. Only, it’s sort of a dirty version, there’s a lot of swearing, people acting stupid and throwing things, it’s very disorganized, but it can be very funny. Andy and I start saying things and each one tries to be more disgusting than the other. You know, we do it to amuse ourselves, but if we ever put it on the air we’d all be arrested.

Linzi: Funniest things that happen at rehearsal?

CONAN: There was a time when our head writer [Jonathan Groff] had to go use the bathroom, he’d had a lotta coffee, so he ran into the bathroom during rehearsal and we sent the camera crew in after him, he didn’t know, he found out and he got angry and chased the camera crew. We do things like that. Pranks. Childish things.

Linzi: Do they make fun of you?

CONAN: Oh all the time they do things. They play sound effects, everyone mocks me. I’ll make fun of the director [Liz Plonka] but then the director will make fun of me. If I have a pimple or something the camera crew will zoom in on it. It’s just all kind of things like that, but it’s good, it helps relax us for the show.

Question: Can you list the items on your desk and tell us the significance of each? (Al B)

CONAN: There’s the mug of Eisenhower. I’ve always been obsessed with American Presidents, coz [sic] I studied American History when I was in college and that was my favorite subject. So when the show was beginning, that was a gift someone had given me years before, the Eisenhower mug, It’s really pretty beautiful, it’s a nice mug, and I really loved it. So I put it on my desk coz I thought, the show is so silly it would be good if there’s an authority figure present. Because when I first began doing the show no one knew who I was, they didn’t know who Andy was and we didn’t have much respect from people, so I thought I’ll put a figure of great authority and respect on the table, they’ll be someone there who will have respect. So and then he’s just been there since the beginning. Then the only other item really is my mug, which my friend Greg Daniels, who used to be my writing partner, he went on to create the show "King Of The Hill" a big hit here in America. When I got the job he took a class where you can make pottery and he made me that mug. He painted all the silly nonsense words on it that I say.

Linzi: What are the words on the mug?

CONAN: Um, they make no sense. I used to make silly nonsense words. Like I’ve always been a fan of nonsense, you know, kind of like Lewis Caroll [sic]. So, I used to say things like "Sweet, sweet goo", "Gibble", instead of "hello" I would say "shello" to people. I would say "yabble", I would say "Jub-jub" – Jub-Jub was the name that I gave for Salma’s Iguana. We were all sitting round the room and everyone was trying to think of a name, and they were all thinking of normal names like "Susie" or whatever, little normal pet names "Fido" and I just said "Jub-Jub" and they all laughed and said "ok, Jub-Jub". So I came up with the thing "Jub-Jub" and then Greg put it on the mug. So the mug is basically just a little drawing of me at my desk and it says all those nonsense words all around it.

CONAN ON FAME

Linzi: Has fame changed you?

CONAN: I don’t think so. I mean, I have friends who tell me they don’t really think I’ve changed that much. I think the secret is that is that I never thought too much of myself in a way. I don’t think I ever had a huge ego, I always had a lot of self-doubt, and I was very self-deprecating and made fun of myself. It didn’t really change. You know there are people that have said "Well now that your show is doing well, you shouldn’t make fun of yourself anymore," but that’s my sense of humor and I still kind of feel that way. I don’t think it’s changed me that much. I’ve had the same girlfriend pretty much since the show began. So it’s not like I can really go out and date supermodels or anything, and even if I did, I would probably feel too self-conscious, I would think that I looked stupid. I would feel silly trying to live like a big celebrity. I don’t like to go to big movie premiers and wave at photographers and stuff because that all just feels silly to me. I just like doing my show and I’ve got my dog and my girlfriend.

Linzi: Will we see Hudson on the show?

CONAN: Maybe we will. Maybe we’ll put him in something. He’s really cute, he’s a really sweet dog and I think he’d like to be. He came to rehearsal the other day, he came and he sat up at my desk. He loves people, so I think if he came out and saw an audience he’d be really happy. So maybe we’ll try and write him into a sketch.

Question: Is it possible to have a ‘normal’ relationship being famous? (Damone)

CONAN: Yeah, yeah! Sure you can. It’s not always easy because. You know sometimes if you’re having, whenever anybody has a wife or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a husband, whenever you have that situation there are times when you quarrel or there are times when you’re not getting along and you bicker, "Well you have the car keys, no took the car keys, no you had them..." and you start bickering. If you’re a television personality everybody is looking at you, so sometimes that’s a drag... The fact that people are looking at you sometimes isn’t fun. But other than that, it’s not like I’m Michael Jackson or Tom Cruise. I’m this person who has this show at 12:30 at night, so it’s a more comfortable level of fame. Do you know what I mean, it’s not like "crazy fame".

Linzi: You haven’t had to disguise yourself so as not be recognized?

CONAN: It doesn’t work in my case. If I dress up I’m still 6’ 4 with this weird hair. Even when I wear a hat and glasses people know that it’s me.

Question: Do you have any big-time celebrity friends? (Jen)

CONAN: Not really. The only real big celebrity friend that I have, who’s like a close friend of mine, is Lisa Kudrow from "Friends", but that’s because we knew each other from long before either one of us got famous. She and I just were friends for years and years.

[A funny noise goes off in the background.]

CONAN: Did you hear that sound in the background?

Linzi: Yeah, what was that?

CONAN: That’s my cuckoo clock. The staff gave me a cuckoo clock, it’s a real wooden, German cuckoo clock. But instead of a wooden bird coming out of the little hatch, they changed it and a little Conan head comes out... and it’s got a little red pompadour. Whenever I’m doing talking to people on the phone or doing an interview you can hear it going "cuckoo" in the background. It sounds like Pewee’s Playhouse [sic]. I’m not a big believer of calling up other celebrities and saying "hey, I’m a celebrity let’s be friends". It just seems like a phoney reason to be friends.

Question: Has your girlfriend ever been jealous when you’re talking to someone like Rebecca Romijn? (Melanie)

CONAN: I don’t let her watch those shows. She doesn’t work at the show, and she doesn’t watch the show at night because that means she’s watching it with me and if I watch the show it makes me crazy because if it’s a really good show I get excited and can’t sleep. And if it was a show that I didn’t like for some reason I get upset that it wasn’t good enough, then I can’t sleep. So either way, she’s like "You can’t watch it at 12:30, you have to watch it on tape the next day if you want." But if Rebecca Romijn or someone’s on I just say "hey, let’s watch a movie instead". The less she knows about that stuff the better.

AWAY FROM THE SHOW

Linzi: How do you like to do to relax when you’re not at the show?

CONAN: Away from the show I’m pretty boring. I like to play the guitar and what I do is I turn on the radio and I play along with songs. I try and figure them out and play along, and I have a bunch of electric guitars. Which really annoys my dog, he hates when I play the guitar. I have a little house out in the country and I go there sometimes. I meet friends for lunch or something, or go see a movie. Nothing too exciting. I’m probably kind of boring. I like to hang around New York, walk around and go to guitar stores or go to bookstores just things like that. Nothing too crazy.

Linzi: I heard that Jimmy Vivino, who I am a HUGE fan of, gave you guitar lessons.

CONAN: You like Jimmy Vivino?

Linzi: I lurve Jimmy Vivino.

CONAN: He’s a really nice guy too. One nice thing about Jimmy is that he can show me the guitar, he can teach me things. He’ll come in my dressing room and I’ll ask him, you know, how do you play… there’s this new song out by this group and I have the CD, and I’ll go "how do you play that?" And he’ll listen to it and he’ll show me how the person plays it. So it’s really fun, it’s a good time.

Linzi: Do you ever get to go to see him live?

CONAN: Yeah! I go to see him play with his, he has a band, he plays with Johnnie Johnson sometimes, he plays with Al Kooper sometimes, and he plays with Mike Merritt – the bass player, he plays with him. And he plays with this drummer who’s going to fill in for Max. [James Wormworth] He plays with James who’s a really good drummer and a nice guy. So it’s good that James is gonna come and fill in coz the whole group already knows him and knows how to play with him.

Question: What books are you currently reading? (KF)

CONAN: I just finished reading this book Undaunted Courage, it’s about Lewis and Clark and I’m reading a biography of Keith Moon. I used to be a big "Who" fan when I was a kid and I really liked Keith Moon, and I tried to be a drummer but I wasn’t good enough.

Question: What are you listening to right now? (John)

CONAN: I’m listening to the new "Black Crowes" album coz they’re coming on the show in a couple of weeks and I like them. And you know that group "Fastball", you know that big hit "The Way", I learned how to play that, and I’m trying to figure out the solo, so I’ve been listening to that song.

Linzi: Did Jimmy teach you how to play it?

CONAN: No, someone else showed me how. I pretty much had it figured out except I couldn’t figure out one chord. The one point where it goes from "f sharp minor" to "f sharp major" and I couldn’t figure that out, one of the sound people on the show figured it out and he told me. But I didn’t ask Jimmy, because sometimes I don’t want to bother him too much. I feel like I’m being a pain in the neck.

Question: Are you going to be in a movie? (Chantale)

CONAN: No, not if I can help it. I mean, if the right thing came along. Sometimes I get offered things, or a possibility comes up but it seems like kind of a dumb thing to go do. I’m not someone who’s looking, I like what I do and I don’t want to use this show to go try and be in a bad movie. Coz I think that would be a waste. If someone came up with a part where I could do something really interesting or funny that wouldn’t disappoint my fans then I would certainly do it. I’d like to try it sometime, but it’s not a big goal of mine. I sort of like doing the show that I’m doing now.

Question: Would you ever consider hosting SNL? (Melanie)

CONAN: It’s a good question. I’ve thought about it at times and… do you think I should do it?

Linzi: I think it would be brilliant.

CONAN: You’d like it? Well, one of the things I worry about… I’m kind of a little bit of a perfectionist about those things. Saturday Night Live is risky because you go in there and if the writers are having an off week... and there’s not a lot of time, there’s only a couple of days to put it together... I would hate it to be disappointing and I’d be really crushed if, because I used to work there, I’d be really crushed if I tried to do it and it just wasn’t good.

Linzi: Have you been asked to do it?

CONAN: Not formally, no, but I know if I called up Lorne [Michaels] he’d probably let me do it. We’ve kind of skirted around it a bit. I think they kind of enquired once, but I felt like I wasn’t ready yet. So maybe sometime in the future I would do it if they wanted me to. I’ve always felt like I should just work on making my own show good. It’s hard enough to try and do your own show every night, let alone to try and go and do someone else’s show.

CONAN ON THE SHOW

Question: How long does it take to prepare each show? (Jen M)

CONAN: Well, it depends. Some pieces we work on for a couple of weeks. Sometimes where we do a piece like "Satellite TV" where we have lots of different weird channels, sometimes if we're doing a show like that it might take two weeks to put together. So one of the writers is just off working on that for two weeks, setting it up before we actually show it on the air. Other pieces like those fake newspaper ads we show, Actual Items, or Year 2000, or any of those, some of those we can start putting together the night before. Or at least a day or two before, you know, so it really depends on the piece. More complicated complex pieces take a long time to do. So you kind of stagger things, you have some people working on something for a week and some elements of the show they started working on the day before. You very rarely are working on tomorrow's show today, we're usually a little farther ahead than that.

Linzi: Can you tell me who came up with the idea for the "Bill Reilly Jump & Choke Channel"?

CONAN: I think that was Tommy Blacha, he's the one that play's Bill Reilly. We love that channel. I think the ones that really work is the ones that are really stupid but also they have some intelligence to them that you can't really put your finger on where it is. That was just a natural. It was kind of like the "Clive Clemmons Inappropriate" the minute we saw it we knew we had something. And we love that one.

Question: How did you feel the day the Clinton Scandal broke? (Jen)

CONAN: Well it's a little tricky, some people think that comedians love this kind of thing, but it's a little tough because when there's a story that big it means that everybody's making jokes about it, so it's harder to be original. So it can actually be a little irritating sometimes because… I was happy when they finally acquitted President Clinton because I felt like "good, it's over now" we tried not to have our whole show revolve around it. I think people get tired of it, it's too many jokes about the same thing.

Question: When did you first meet Robert Smigel? (Damone)

CONAN: I first met Robert Smigel in January of 1988. I know it was January in 1988 because that was when I got my job at Saturday Night Live. I went to Saturday Night Live and Robert Smigel was one of the writers there and he was very quiet and he didn't say much, he was kind of shy. But over the next couple of weeks we started to realize that we had a similar sense of humor and we worked well together. That summer Robert and Bob Odenkirk from "Mr Show", who was another writer on the show, were doing a stage show in Chicago and they said "do you wanna come with us and do it with us?" and I said "Yes, I'd love to do that." So I drove to Chicago and I did a stage show called "Happy, Happy Good Show". And "Happy, Happy Good Show" had a lot of silly sketches in it and one of them was the Year 2000, which we did as part of a stage show. And it was a very silly show where we'd wear diapers. I had to wear a diaper at one part and do a piece called "Kennedy Baby" where I played Ted Kennedy as a baby and I wore a diaper and went [does that accent] "Dab, dab, dab, dab…" Just really silly things but we did "Year 2000" and that summer I think Robert and I started to bond and we got really close and then we started writing together a lot and because we started working well together we decided to write a TV pilot together. We wrote a TV pilot for Adam West called "Lookwell" and even though it never became a TV show we just got in the habit of working with each other. Years later I left and I did "The Simpsons", and years later after I auditioned for this show and the audition went well and I got the job the first thing I did was call Robert Smigel and said "I got the Late Night show you have to be the head writer, you have to be." Coz I knew that he would have a similar sensibility as me. We both like cartoon-y things, we both like puppets and cartoons and that kind of sense of humor, so then he agreed to do it. So that's how we got the Clutch Cargo and the puppets, Conan Babies and all these silly things, but it all started back in 1988.

CONAN ONLINE

Question: Do you use the internet?

CONAN: Not too much. I go and look at it sometimes, but I'm not very good with computers so I always need someone there to show me how to do things.

Question: What are your thoughts on the internet fan groups out there? (From Everyone)

CONAN: Oh it's great!! It's really gratifying because we work very hard on the show and we try and do things… we put a lot of work into it, I know the show often looks like oh they're just fooling around and having a good time, and we are having a good time, but it's also a lot of work. People work very hard here, so when you look at all the work that people put into their websites and how they're paying very close attention and they have the things they like and they don't like, but you can tell they're passionate about it. That's very gratifying. Because we're here in the studio, and I don't get out much, I come here in the morning and last night I went home at 10:30 at night, you know, so it's not like I get that much feedback, so it's nice to see that people care about the show. I think it's great.

Question: Do you read your own fanmail? (Katie)

CONAN: Yeah! My assistant does-I can't read all of it-she goes through it and if there are particularly nice ones or particularly interesting ones or requests or anything like that, I read those ones. If it's people just writing "hey, love the show, I live in Texas…" she doesn't show me all of those, but if someone writes and it's a really good letter or they've sent me something they want me to see or they ask "could I sign this" for them, I always look at those ones.

INFLUENCES

Question: How have such people as Ernie Kovaks [sic], Dave Letterman and Regis Philbin influenced you? (WilcoxJsn, Lynn, Aimee, Dan)

CONAN: Ernie Kovaks was not an influence because I never saw his shows. So he wasn't a direct influence on me. He was probably an indirect influence in that he influenced other people who then influenced me, but I never saw Ernie Kovaks until after I had this show, and that's when I started to see tapes of Ernie Kovaks. David Letterman was a very big influence on me. I started watching David Letterman when I was a senior in highschool and he had his morning show on NBC, that would have been in 1980-81. So I started watching him then, and then he started his "Late Night" show when I was a freshman in college and I used to watch that show and I was very aware that he was the person who inspired me a lot. He showed me that you could do a late night TV show that had a lot of strange elements in it. Coz Johnny Carson was, of course, great, his show was more sort of straight-ahead entertainment and David Letterman I think was the first person to combine some of the strangeness and sort of fringe-comedy of Saturday Night Live with a late night talk show format. So I credit him a lot. He really influenced me. Inspired me to think, I don't wanna do a show exactly like his but there's room to do a really odd late night TV show one day. I used to watch him and think "boy that's something I'd like to do"...

Question: Would you like to see the show move up an hour to 11:30?

CONAN: I kinda like it where it is. I think there might come a point in my life where if it's possible for me to go earlier then it would be fun to do. Right now I don't know if in America the "Jump & Choke Channel" would work at 11:30. There'd be too many middle-aged people sitting around their TV watching going "what the hell is this?" There's something about 12:30 that people know if they're up watching television comedy at 12:30 at night in America it means they deserve to see something weird. I think we're better off where we are right now.

Linzi: What would you like to do outside of the show that you haven't yet done?

CONAN: I've always wanted to go to Africa. I've never done that and I never have time to because we always get just a week off and you can't really go to Africa during a week off. I'd like to wrestle an Ape I think that'd be really fun. That's always been my lifelong dream to wrestle an Ape, show him who's boss. And then on the show, I really want us to do, you know sometimes we do bad claymation on our show? I want do a whole episode of our show that's all claymation. Bad claymation and that's something I think we're going to try and do.

Question: What do you think you'll do when the show actually ends?

CONAN: I don't know, it's depressing.

Question: Would you go back to writing? (Nos)

CONAN: I don't think so, I really like performing, I really like being in front of an audience. I think that's my favorite thing, I love being in front of an audience and it just makes me happy to be out in front of a crowd. Even if things aren't particularly working too well, I still like to be out there trying. I think I've ruined myself for writing, I think I'd never be content to be a writer again. So I don't know what I would do. Maybe I could come to Scotland… I've never been to Scotland. Everybody raves about the comedy festival in Edinburgh… I really want to go to that sometime. I've talked to Rich Hall about it, and one of my producers goes to it, Frank Smiley, and he says that it's the best, there's really funny comedians…

Linzi: Yeah, Ed Byrne does it every year and he's just brilliant

CONAN: I love Ed Byrne he's great. When Ed Byrne came to the show, the whole show was over and Ed Byrne was standing out in the hallway and I was walking out just to go home, actually I was going to go upstairs to go to a meeting and Ed Byrne said [adopts Irish accent] "What happens now? Do we all go out to a pub or something?" And I said "Well actually we don't, but if you want to… Let's go!" and he said ok. So, me and a few other writers and we all took him to a bar and we ended up having a really good time. But I thought, being stupid, we go to the bar, and I thought well I'm here with Ed Byrne and he's going to want a Guinness or something like that. So I ordered him a Guinness, and Ed Byrne said "I don't want a Guinness… if you're from England or Ireland you get Guinness all the time… I want a Budweiser." If you're in America, you don't want a Budweiser. He was a lotta fun.

Question: What's going to happen to the "YEAR 2000" bit in the year 2000? (Everyone!)

CONAN: I don't know, what do you think we ought to do? I think we're going to want to keep doing it, I don't know what we're going to call it though. We keep thinking shall we just keep calling it "year 2000" even when it's the year 2000? Should we call it "In the Distant Future…" I think we're going to put off what we do about it till the problem is upon us. We're open to suggestion.

Question: How did you and Andy meet? (Kelly)

CONAN: Well I got the show, they hired me to do the show, and I came to New York - No, I wasn't in New York yet, I was still out in Los Angeles trying to meet with people who could help us do the show. And we were hearing about different funny people when I was meeting with them and I heard about this guy Andy Richter and Robert Smigel talked to him and said well "Conan, you should talk to him and see what you think." So, I called Andy on the phone and we talked on the phone and I said "do you wanna get together and meet?" and he said "OK" and he suggested that we go to a Deli in Los Angeles. He said let's meet there for lunch, so I said Ok, so at the appointed time I drove to the parking lot and I walked into the Deli and Andy Richter stepped up and said "Hi, I'm Andy Richter" and I immediately liked him. He's got this great face, he's got this great manner about him, he's just really funny. Now, at the time we were talking about a writing job, but even while I was chatting with him I was thinking "You know, he might be a good guy to be a sidekick, to be out there with me…" and I didn't bring it up at the time, but we just hired him and then over the course of the summer I just started to realize that I just had a good chemistry with him. So when we started doing test shows, even before the real show started, we started doing test shows and I said "Andy, do you wanna just sit up here next to me," he wasn't sure but he said "ok, I'll try it," and we had him sitting up there and it just felt right. It was one of those things, a good relationship, it just felt right right away. I think our relationship improved a lot, you know at first only hard-core fans saw it, but it took a little while to develop, but now people think that Andy and I were always friends. They think that we went to highschool together or something. And when I tell them that oh, no, no, I got the show and then I hired him they can't believe it.

Linzi: Do you and Andy ever hang out together after work?

CONAN: No not too much because he's got a wife - who can't stand me! No, he's got a wife and he lives downtown with his own circle of friends. We sometimes do things together but I think it would be a little overkill coz we're here all day together and we're working together and if at night we hung together we'd probably start bickering on the air. "Why did you say that to my wife?" "Well she had too much to drink!" We'd have these fights on the air.

Linzi: What’s the most you’ve ever splashed out on yourself?

CONAN: I’m not crazy about that. I think probably, I bought an expensive guitar. A 1950’s, it’s called a Gretch 6120 [sic], and you know the guitar that Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats plays? A big orange guitar, it’s kind of a famous type of guitar. I bought one of those and it wasn’t cheap, but I just felt like you gotta live a little. Probably just pure indulgence other than like my rent and my apartment.

Linzi: What and where was your most romantic moment?

CONAN: Well I guess it’s gotta be with my current girlfriend or else I’m in a lotta trouble. I think probably…we took a trip where we went to Ireland and then Italy. And it was probably in Italy. Italy is just a really romantic place you know. I’m Irish-Catholic so I’m not very good about talking about my romantic moments. I’m too uptight. You know how my people are we never discuss these things, but, probably just being in Italy and having too much to drink. [laughs] That’s when I’m at my most romantic.

Linzi: What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done?

CONAN: I think saying that I’ll do this show with no experience. Don’t you think that qualifies as pretty outrageous?

Linzi: Best day of your life?

CONAN: That’s a tricky one, it’s hard to have just one best day… The day I saw "ET" for the first time.

Linzi: Worst nightmare?

CONAN: Never being able to see "ET" again.

Linzi: What couldn’t you live without?

CONAN: "ET"… How long can I get away with this?

Linzi: If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

CONAN: If I could change one thing about myself it would be that I worry too much. I’m a worrier. I get too self-critical and like "you better do a good job and hope this is a good show today". I think sometimes I’d have more fun in life if I didn’t. I struggle with it because part of my personality actually helps. I worry and so I work extra hard on the show, and I worry and I really prepare… And I think it helps make the show funny, but sometimes it just gets in the way, and it means I don’t have as much fun as I could have.

Linzi: What’s the most annoying thing that happens to you?

CONAN: People come up to me in the street and go "Hey it’s CoNan the Barbarian"…

Linzi: People still do that to you?

CONAN: Yeah they still do it occasionally and you really want to say "Did you just come up with that?"

Question: Is there a reason why you sometimes bow to Andy, Max and your guests? (Conanina)

CONAN: Oh, I’m paying them respect. I must bow to Andy. I must bow to Max. That’s my way of showing respect. And it also loosens my lower back.

Question: Will you ever have Tomorry back on the show? (Conanina)

CONAN: Tomorry! I bet Tomorry comes back at some point. It’s just that we do things for a while and then we feel like "ok we did that enough let’s move on" You know, and that’s how we found the Shirtless Moron and PimpBot. You gotta keep moving, the show is like a shark, if it ever stops moving it dies.

Linzi: Do you have your own favorite sketch or character?

CONAN: A bunch. I love Robot On The Toilet, I love Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, I love it when Don King comes on in the Clutch Cargo… but I’m just scratching the surface, there’s so many that I really like. Oh, I love Andy’s little sister, that’s one of my favorites.

Linzi: What do you think of your fans who behave like Stacy?

CONAN: [laughs] I like it! It’s very flattering. I like that my fans wear giant retainers over their teeth. I like doing the song improv... where I pick up the guitar... There are a lot of sketches that I really like. I used to love the sketches with Oldy in them and I was sad that he passed away coz I really loved the sketches with him. I love some of the Satellite TVs, you know, like Clive Clemmons, or the Bill Reilly Jim & Choke Channel [sic]. I like it when we use puppets. I love some of the things we do where puppets catch fire and things like that. Just love anything with puppets getting hurt.

Linzi: How far will you go in the name of entertainment?

CONAN: I think I have a pretty good sense.. I don’t want to really hurt people, I’m too thin-skinned myself to do that. I don’t really wanna hurt people’s feelings. But if something’s really funny, I just feel like it has to be put on the air somehow. I don’t think I’d ever stop something really funny from going on the air. You can just tell when something’s really funny.

Linzi: Was letting Max leave to go on tour with Bruce a tough decision for you?

CONAN: No, it really wasn’t because you can’t stand in the way of something like that. If the same thing like, say Andy got a part in a movie or something and he was going to have to be gone for a month, if he came to me and said "I’d really like to do this movie" I’m not gonna say "no you can’t", as long as they come back I think people should be allowed to do their side things. It’s healthier and it makes people feel happier about working here…

Question: Would you have the ReKooperators on as a musical guest? (Darcy)

CONAN: We did once. No, it was Al Kooper, Jimmy played with him, but it was Al Kooper playing one of his songs off of his album. But yeah I think we could have the ReKooperators on. We could do that.

Question: What was it like having your Fifth Anniversary? (Sonja)

CONAN: That was reeeeeally great. That was one of the happiest times here at the show. The minute it was over I got really depressed. Linzi: You did? CONAN: Yeah! Because I felt like "Oh boy what do we do now?" But I really was happy with how it came out. I really loved doing the show in the Saturday Night Live studio. That was so much fun. I just felt really great about it. I was happy when the show came out, couldn’t believe the fan response. It was really nice, I was thrilled.

Linzi: What was it like being on Sesame Street?

CONAN: Oh it was fun. At the end I had to sing the Sesame Street Song with the puppets – that was the hard part. Coz you just keep thinking "what am I doing? What’s happened to me?" When you walk onto that set, it’s oh my God, I grew up looking at this street and here I am, I’m on it. This show is scheduled to air on May 11 1999.

Question: What was your favourite Muppet?

CONAN: Probably Oscar The Grouch, because he’s so mean and I was always intrigued that they had the guts to put a really mean puppet on a kids show. He used to scare me when I was a kid.

Question: What do you think of Canada?

CONAN: Oh I love Canada! Most of my favorite comedy comes from Canada. SCTV was a show that was on in the late ‘70’s early ‘80’s and it was the funniest, when I was growing up and coming of age that was my favorite TV show. And the Kids In The Hall. So many hysterical people come from Canada. One of the reasons I’ve always really liked Canada is that when my show first began people in the States… Americans, because they thought "who is this guy? – he’s no Letterman" they were really mean about the show and they weren’t very nice about it, but Canadians, from the very beginning, were very nice about the show. They appreciated the odd comedy and they were actually paying attention to the comedy that we were doing and they weren’t judging it negatively. In the beginning, in the early months of the show, you’d sometimes see really enthusiastic people in the crowd and invariably they were from Toronto. I’ve always really appreciated Canada, in a lotta ways they’re ahead of us in comedy. We’re playing catchup.

Question: What are you doing in the Year 2000 to celebrate?

CONAN: Um.. I think just thinking of a new name for "The Year 2000". That’s what I’m going to do that night. Stay up really late with a couple of writers and we’ll think of another name for it.

Question: Have you ever cried at a movie? (Quinn)

CONAN: Yeah well I got a little misty eyed when I saw "Life Is Beautiful" the Roberto Benigni movie. Oh "Muriel’s Wedding" when the mother commits suicide in "Muriel’s Wedding" that really bothered me. I got really upset when that happened.

Question: What do you sleep in?

CONAN: I have feetie pyjamas, you know the pyjamas with the little feet on them that children wear? I have a pair of those, it has all the "Star Wars" characters on it. They’re very comfortable.

Question: Did you ever play in your father’s laboratory as a small child? (Al B)

CONAN: [laughs] No I didn’t because my Dad, coz he works with germs and everything, so he was strict about us not playing. But also it smelled bad at his lab. Labs smell bad they just smell like chemicals and I just hated being in there.

Linzi: Do you think you’ll take the show on the road?

CONAN: I hope so it’s just very expensive and the network tends to give a lot of the money to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I think we’re going to get to travel sometime this year though. I bet you in ’99 we get to go somewhere. Whether it’s somewhere really fun or somewhere really cheap I don’t know, but we’ll get to travel.

Linzi: Where would you like to take the show if you did go out?

CONAN: As long as we took it on the road it could be fun. I used to say we should take the show someplace really odd, we should take it to Greenland or something that no one else would do, but the network probably wouldn’t give us the money to do that. Maybe we’ll get to do a week in Los Angeles or something like that, or a week in some other American city. I’d like to do a week in Cuba. And in the end film me and Andy being arrested by U.S. Customs people. But I don’t know if that’ll happen.