While Conan O'Brien makes shows about travelling to new places nowadays, it turns out he had an unusual adventure in Vancouver nearly 40 years ago.
During a recent episode of O'Brien's podcast, he and Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Rec, King of the Hill) recounted their unusual trip to Vancouver.
"There's a whole story, it's probably a screenplay," O'Brien says midway through the podcast. "Where you and I decided to just...I think we had seen in the news that Princess Diana and her husband, Charles, had just been to Vancouver for, like, a fair."
"It was like Expo 87," Daniels adds. "And we saw an ad where they made it look amazing."
It turns out O'Brien had been intrigued by an old Chicago world expo, and the pair decided they really wanted to go to "Expo 87."
In point of fact, Expo 86 ran from May until October 1986. Princess Diana and "Charles" (who is now King Charles III) were on hand to open the world's fair on May 2, 1986.
"By the way, the expo was over, but we thought 'we'll see the remnants!'" O'Brien explains.
The two then bailed on parties in L.A. to come to Vancouver, expecting to see exhibits by the likes of Xerox.
But lo, when they got to Vancouver, Expo 86 was over.
So they sat in their motel and watched TV. And got hooked on The Beachcombers.
"There's a Canadian content show that ran for like 50 years, it's like the Bold and Beautiful of Canada, called Beachcombers," says Daniels.
Daniels and O'Brien enacted a scheme to shake hands with one of the actors.
"We went and we got reporters' notebooks and we're interviewing people all over town pretending we're reporters," O'Brien recounts.
They went to the CBC and found out Beachcombers was shot in Gibsons, so they planned a quick trip to the Sunshine Coast, but didn't have much time before their return flight to Seattle.
However, they missed the ferry and ended up hiring a fishing boat to take them over.
"We paid some guy to go faster than the ferry in his fishing boat," Daniels recounts.
In the end, they were able to find the actor by knocking on doors, completing their task.
The story later made its way to a major Hollywood agent who wanted to turn the story into a movie. O'Brien turned down the idea.
"It's two nerds doing something very nerdy," O'Brien explained to the agent.
The entire conversation starts just after the 33-minute mark in the episode, and runs about six minutes.
