Tom Green on his ‘hero’ Letterman

When Canadian comedy star Tom Green was 15, he put on a pair of grey khaki pants, Adidas sneakers and his dad’s blazer before going to the Yuk Yuk’s standup club in Ottawa to perform.

He was “basically trying to be David Letterman,” Green says, noting the late night talk show host who retires on Wednesday was his comedy “hero.”

“When I started my show on Rogers cable, with the desk and going out in the street and doing pranks, a lot of it was just from growing up watching Letterman yell out of his office building in Rockefeller Center with a megaphone and doing all the on-thestreet stuff,” says Green, who was born in Pembroke, Ont. “That was really inspiring to me.” Green finally got to meet his hero after The Tom Green Show got picked up by MTV and he was booked as a guest on Late Show with David Letterman.

He then got a rare chance to guest-host Letterman’s show on June 13, 2003.

Letterman rarely took a break from hosting duties but, for unknown reasons, he was unable to work on that day. Green got the call with just 24 hours’ notice and wrote his monologue on the plane to New York.

“I just remember how surreal it was being backstage ... and (when) I walked out and did that monologue,” he says. “It was really an out-of-body experience, almost.”

Green thinks it’s going to be “strange” and “sad” not having Letterman on TV anymore.

“I’m 43 years old and it’s one of those moments in life where you start to feel your age, like, ‘Oh, wow, I must be getting older because Letterman is not going to be on TV anymore, Jay Leno is not on TV anymore, Larry King is not on TV anymore, Regis (Philbin) is not on TV anymore,’” says Green.