Legendary US talk show host Conan O'Brien joked that Barack Obama Plaza in County Tipperary is the "greatest tribute to any American President" during an appearance on Ireland's "Late Late Show" on Friday night.
O'Brien, who is in Ireland to film an episode of his upcoming show "Conan O'Brien Must Go", also told Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty that an air pump at the service station has been renamed the "Conan O'Brien Air Pump".
"I visited what I think is the greatest tribute to any American president - and I’ve seen them all – and it’s Barack Obama Plaza," O'Brien said on Friday night.
"It’s not often you can pay homage to a bronze statue of a president and the first lady and then get a pretty decent sandwich at the same time."
He added that the service station, which is located close to former President Barack Obama's ancestral homeland, paid him a "great honor" by naming an air pump after him.
"This is real - the Conan O’Brien air pump!" O'Brien said, humorously adding that he is receiving 15% of the profits from the pump.
O'Brien, who arrived on the Late Late Show in a parade float bedecked in Irish flags, also spoke about his Irish heritage, noting that genealogists have told him that he is 100% Irish.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the US presenter said a man in Limerick had shown him where his great-grandfather had lived before emigrating to the United States.
Hey, I found my piece of the Auld Sod! pic.twitter.com/1CecGfeqML
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) January 11, 2024
O'Brien also revealed that he played a walk-on part in the Irish-language soap opera Ros na Rún, stating that he used phonetic spellings of Irish-language words to get him through his scene.
"I was looking at it and I didn’t think I could do it. The cast was really helpful – they helped me write it out phonetically," O'Brien told Kielty.
O'Brien joked that the Irish language looked like someone took "a lot of consonants and put them in a blender and threw them out" before taking a stab at pronouncing some of the audience members' names, butchering the pronunciation of Caoilfhionn and Bláthnaid.
O'Brien additionally spoke about his meeting with US President Joe Biden last year following Biden's historic visit to Ireland. He said Biden showed him a scrapbook of that historic visit before the interview began and added that they both exchanged stories about their Irish-American upbringing.
He finished his 18-minute interview with a rendition of "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (That's An Irish Lullaby)", leaving Kielty in hysterics.
Comments