Late Night With David Letterman - Recurring Late Night Segments

Recurring Late Night Segments

• The Top Ten List, from various "home offices"
• Stupid Pet Tricks
• Stupid Human Tricks
• Viewer Mail
• Supermarket Finds
• Dave's wearing of various suits, including the "Suit of Velcro" and "Suit of Rice Krispies."
• Dumb Ads
• "Lucky Numbers"
• Small Town News
• Ask Mr. Melman (Larry "Bud" Melman)
• Dave's Record Collection
• Short plays presented by the Peace Through Dramatization Players (featuring Chris Ellott, Gerard Mulligan and other Late Night writers)
• A series of "Guy" characters portrayed by Chris Elliott. Each of these characters made numerous appearances over the course of a year or two before being retired, amidst much mock fanfare. Then Elliott would appear a few episodes later playing the next in his series of "Guy" characters.
  • The Panicky Guy : Elliot would pretend to be an audience member who panics and runs from the studio at the slightest threat of danger (similar to doomed characters in disaster movies). Once in the hallway he would be run over and crushed by an advancing floor waxer, with his hands raised in terror. In one variation, he played a German Panicky Guy in Lederhosen, who was run over by a hand dolly full of cheese wheels.
  • The Conspiracy Guy: Elliott would again pretend to be an audience member, this time asking Dave a question. Things would quickly devolve into his character shouting and making crazy accusations about Dave before being forcibly removed from the set by two goons.
  • The Guy Under the Seats: a short character-comedy bit by Elliott who emerges from a hatchway underneath the seats in the studio audience. Immediately followed thereafter by Elliott as himself (portraying himself as living under the seats, that is) chatting amiably with Letterman. At some point Letterman would make an innocuous comment or innocent joke causing Elliott to overreact, threaten Letterman with some metaphorically articulated future comeuppance and withdraw back under the seats with the admonition "But until that day, I'm gonna be right here, making your life ..a living hell."
  • The Fugitive Guy: Every so often, Letterman would introduce "Roger Campbell" (Elliott, wearing an extremely bad toupée), a new member of the Late Night crew. In each appearance, "Campbell" would have a different low-level job (e.g., cue card holder, tambourine player for the band), and would grow increasingly nervous as Letterman amiably asked Campbell innocuous questions about his job and his life. Fairly quickly, Campbell would break down under the "grilling," and would then hear the approach of "the one-legged man" and flee. This sketch was a parody of The Fugitive, and eventually included a title sequence that parodied the original Quinn Martin TV series theme. The Fugitive Guy sketches concluded with a final episode where Campbell confronted the one-legged man in an abandoned amusement park.
  • The Regulator Guy: A series of expensive-looking promos for a Terminator-like action character aired on "Late Night" over a period of several months, with Elliott playing the super-cool half-human, half-mechanical "Regulator Guy," even speaking with a bad Schwarzenegger-esque accent. Repeatedly promoted during "Late Night" as "Coming soon to NBC!" the "Regulator Guy" appeared only once in a sketch on the show, but this appearance was a (deliberately) cheap and poorly-done affair, which ended with Letterman interviewing the new sidekick character, Ajax, while completely ignoring Elliott (much to his faux-chagrin).
  • The New Regulator Guy: Shortly after "The Regulator Guy" was retired, Elliott came back with a re-tooled version called "The New Regulator Guy." This character similarly did not last long.
• The destruction (with comic effect) of certain items, including "Crushing Things with a Steamroller," "Throwing Things Off a Five-Story Building," and "Crushing Things with an 80-Ton Hydraulic Press."
• Poetry with My Dog Stan
• Charlie the Bubble-Eating Dog (who never actually ate bubbles)
• Visits with Meg Parsont in the Simon & Schuster Building, in which Dave would have Hal Gurnee "turn on the external camera" pointed across the street to the office window of Simon & Schuster employee Meg Parsont. Letterman would converse with Parsont on the phone, as well as surprise her with gifts, guests, etc. delivered to her office. Parsont would make a return appearance on Letterman's Late Show in 1993.
• Elevator Races
• NBC Bookmobile
• Peaboy (played by intern Dave Ellner wearing green tights and green Adidas, blowing athletic whistle, throwing frozen peas at audience)
• Visits with Dave's Mom (Dorothy Mengering) via remote from Carmel, Indiana)
• Young Inventors
• Marv Albert with The Wild and the Wacky from the World of Sports
• Visits with Jack Hanna
• Hal Gurnee's Network Time Killers: Introduced during the summer of 1988 (after Late Night had returned from a lengthy hiatus due to a Writers Guild strike), the feature included Hal Gurnee introducing bizarre time-killing features from his director's perch in the control room.
• What's Hal Wearing?
• Various 'cam' shots, including Late Night Thrill Cam and Late Night Monkey Cam