So, farewell, then, Conan O’Brien. The ginger-coiffed talkshow host has hung up his microphone for the last time, on NBC at least. One of the most successful presenters ever, O’Brien made a name for himself from 1993 to 2009 as host of Late Night with Conan O’Brien and more recently as the centrepiece of a wonderful bit of television feuding between him and Jay Leno over who should host The Tonight Show.

The end came quickly. Following a disastrous reworking of The Tonight Show last year where Leno handed over the reins to O’Brien, the former starting his own new programme, ratings plummeted like a stone and NBC tried to push O’Brien’s show to after midnight, broadcasting The Jay Leno Show immediately beforehand. O’Brien got into a hissy fit and took another option – that of receiving a massive pay-off. According to various reports in quality newspapers like the National Enquirer and Seiska, Conan got 33 million dollars from NBC as a golden, or should I say platinum-plated, handshake. Let’s just think about that. THIRTY-THREE MILLION DOLLARS. Wow. Not bad, huh? Oh, he can’t work in telly for six months either, for shame.

O’Brien basically hadn’t changed his routine for the last 16 years, and when he returns to our screens, as he probably will, it’s a fair bet it’ll remain unchanged. Occasionally amusing but more often than not completely vapid, his interview technique mainly consists of talking loudly in an amazingly nasal voice in the manner of an embarrassed uncle who can’t think of anything interesting to say when sitting next to you at a family gathering.

His final episode, broadcast here last week, was a fine example of why this show won’t be missed by people with good taste, like me. Boring jokes, Tom Hanks bigging himself up, weak jokes taking the mick out of NBC, and immense smugness; when it finally ended, although there were surely some people who had tears in their eyes, I just reached for another beer to celebrate.

Like basically all talk-shows, O’Brien’s was simply a celebration of the inane world of celebrities. Also like other talk shows – Leno, Kimmel, Degeneres, Oprah – the presenter is so amazingly self-centred and smug that he may as well not have any guests on at all. The truly classic TV interviewers – Michael Parkinson, perhaps – achieved greatness by quizzing their guests on interesting parts of their lives, or aspects of their careers that could provide some insight into how their world is relevant to ours, what lessons they’ve learned, and so on. O’Brien et al merely pat each other on the back and promote each other’s films, circle-jerking their way through life, in a way that can only be described as…fawning.

There was one mildly amusing sketch that might live on in the memories of my fellow countrymen – the long-running joke concerning the resemblance between President Halonen and Conan. I can’t deny there’s definitely a similarity. What was more revealing was the presence of thousands of Finns at Helsinki airport to greet Conan when he arrived on a short visit a couple of years ago. Most instructional as a lesson on the national psyche – desperate for approval and recognition, and the perfect subjects for O’Brien’s show.

Nick Barlow