While appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday night, the former later night talk show host David Letterman shocked his fans by recounting how he nearly killed the iconic Regis Philbin the night before he retired from “Live! With Regis and Kelly” back in 2011.
Letterman was brainstorming what to get Philbin for retirement with his team when someone suggested getting him a Rascal Scooter as “a joke about how old and feeble” he was. Letterman, however, had a better idea.
“I said, ‘No, no. Let’s don’t give Regis a Rascal Scooter. Let’s give him an actual scooter, like a Vespa. Everybody knows how to ride a motor scooter,'” Letterman recalled suggesting at the time. “So that’s what we decided to do. [We said,] ‘Regis, we’re so excited. We’re sorry you’re retiring, but to commemorate the evening and your last show tomorrow, we’re giving you this beautiful, brand-new Vespa scooter.'”
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Letterman’s show had Philbin ride the scooter on-camera, outside of the studio, and all was going well at first. Right after Philbin waved goodbye, however, he fell off the Vespa!
“He could have been killed. He actually could have been killed. The last night before he retires he comes over, and I kill him,” Letterman said as he laughed. “… Nobody checked him out on it, because the assumption was, A, anybody can ride a scooter. And B, certainly Regis will ride a scooter.”
After this debacle, Letterman decided to take over the driving of the Vespa, instead having Philbin ride on the back.
This is one of many fond memories that Letterman has of Philbin, who died of a heart attack back in July at the age of 88.
“He never said no. He often would do things that we didn’t want him to do,” Letterman said. “He showed up once dressed as Shrek. I’m not sure he knew why, but there he was in his Shrek outfit. But I was unimpressed. I mean, there are guys in show business who need the costume to stay in business. Regis was not one of them.”
“He would do anything. He would come and be on the show and you could call him later and say, ‘Regis, your makeup was lousy. Can you come back? We’re going to do the whole show over.’ And he’d put on his suit and he would come back,” he continued. “Tremendous individual… a great heart.”
Letterman saw Philbin as “the last connection to a show business that I grew up watching back in Indiana,” an era that included the likes of Johnny Carson and Don Rickles.
“When Regis left us, to me, it seemed like, ‘OK, that chapter is closed.’ That made me very sad,” Letterman said. “But I’m telling you, this guy, if somebody said, ‘Let’s pick somebody to drive across country with,’ if it couldn’t be Regis, then I would hitchhike.”
This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.
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