Man of much limb and a fiery beacon of hope to his fellow redheads the world over, Conan O’Brien made US TV history last night in airing the first late-night show filmed in Cuba since a diplomatic embargo began way back in 1962.
In fact, not since Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan travelled to Cuba in successive months in 1959 to interview Fidel Castro has the US late-night industry made its presence felt on the island nation.
But Conan – representing arguably the most human and accessible of the current class of hosts – made the trip amid a renewed push by President Barack Obama to re-establish diplomatic ties with Cuba with a view to potentially lifting the embargo.
Fitting then it was that Conan’s trip consisted of a skeleton crew featuring a producer, his head writer, and a camera crew, with a view of nothing more than “to meet the people, and try and make friends.”
And that’s exactly where Conan excels so well – getting out of his studio, thrusting his praying mantis-like frame around unfamiliar streets, and interacting with locals in his typical, by now almost trademark, self-effacing manner.
The Conan in Cuba special aired in the US late yesterday, and the results were predictably hilarious. This segment in which he gloriously applied his own surprisingly adept musical skills to an established salsa band is particularly great.
Go ahead and try and get the phrase “I am Nutella, I am Nutella” out of your head now. I double dog dare you.
