The Conan We Knew
Renowned talk show host Conan C. O’Brien ’85 was a loyal friend, a literary scholar, and two-term Lampoon President during his Harvard days
By Julie R. Barzilay, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Published: Thursday, May 27, 2010
“Book checker, book checker, please check my book! Open my bag, please take a look—Book checker, book checker, please check my book, Oooooh book checker!”
The long legs of 18-year-old Conan C. O’Brien ’85 bounded across Harvard Yard, red hair bobbing up and down, his impeccable mock cockney accent ringing out into the night.
O’Brien’s Holworthy 16 and later Mather House roommate Eric B. Reiff ’85 strode alongside him, laughing aloud and thinking to himself, “That’s unusual.”
“Most of us are not walking around making up musical comedies in our heads when we’re 18 or 19-years-old,” Reiff said.
The subject of O’Brien’s musical ode was an elderly gentleman who worked the desk at Lamont Library in 1985. O’Brien befriended the book checker, always engaging him in hilarious banter on his way out of the library, according to Reiff.
“Conan does not have an elitist bone in his body,” Reiff said. “He is as interested in what the book checker says as what some eminent professor says—and is open to the idea that the book checker might be funnier.”
From running the Lampoon, to penning Saturday Night Live sketches, to hosting Late Night with Conan O’Brien for 16 years, and finally to his brief stint as host of The Tonight Show, Reiff said there are things about O’Brien that have never changed: keen powers of observation, a killer range of spot-on impressions, and a genuine interest in everyone he meets. And, of course, that hair.
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