The auburn-haired sweetheart of late-night television was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on April 18, 1963. He was valedictorian of his high school class and attended Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude, proving once and for all that major television executives wouldn’t know smart comedy if it slapped them in the face.

While at Harvard, Conan served as the president of the Harvard Lampoon, the college’s premier humor magazine, and after graduation wrote for several different comedy ventures before being hired to work for Saturday Night Live. O’Brien spent four years at Saturday Night Live, and in 1991 transitioned to write for The Simpsons. Conan’s work on the show is often credited with moving the series toward its now-iconic use of surreal and strange visual humor and plot twists, and Conan is credited as a writer on some of the show’s most well-regarded episodes.

In 1993, former employer Lorne Michaels invited Conan to audition for a new late-night comedy show to replace David Letterman’s outgoing program. Thus, Late Night with Conan O’Brien was born. The show wasn’t popular for its first three years, but was nominated for the best writing Emmy in every year from 1996 onwards. In his appearance on the 10^th anniversary episode of Late Night, Mr. T presented Conan with an audacious gold chain displaying a giant “7.” When Conan protested that that his show had actually been airing for ten years, Mr. T replied “I know that, fool, but you’ve only been funny for seven!”

Conan’s show was consistently bizarre and hilarious, spawning such minor cultural touchstones as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Pale Force, and hornymanatee.com. In 2009, as Jay Leno announced that he would be moving out of late night and into prime time, Conan was slated to take over as host of NBC’s nighttime juggernaut The Tonight Show. Seven months later, in a widely criticized move, NBC decided to push Leno’s flagging primetime show back into The Tonight Show’s traditional 10:30 slot, moving The Tonight Show into the late-night timeframe. Conan, unhappy with the new arrangement, decided to look for another station. Fans of O’Brien united under the moniker “Team Coco” to show an outpouring of support for the ousted comedian. 

Eventually, the jesting ginger found a new home with Conan on TBS, and continues to make night-time a little stranger. Team Coco has not laid dormant, however, and in January of 2010 an ambitious youtube artist uploaded a video showcasing love of orange – in both snack foods and late-night entertainers. User EclecticAsylumArt made a huge portrait of Conan entirely out of Cheetos. To that end, we acknowledge both Conan O’Brien and the weird fanaticism he inspires with a recipe for very, very Conan-colored Cheetos Chicken. We suggest pairing it with the DVD of Late Night with Conan O'Brien: 10th Anniversary Special (2003)