A 68-Year-Old Bar Owner Out-Riffed Conan O'Brien on the F Train. Conan Wants a Sitcom

On October 20, the web series SubwayTakes posted an episode with Conan O'Brien on the F train. The bit was supposed to be Conan delivering a hot take. What happened instead is that Debbie Shields, who owns Confessions Bar in Bed-Stuy and had spotted the crew, sat down and announced the two of them used to be married.

They had never met. In about a minute and a half she gave them two sons, one in medical school and one in jail, and Conan, a man who hosted network television for nearly thirty years, hung on like a fellow who's grabbed a horse he didn't know was moving.

It's the right kind of humbling. Conan has spent three decades being the funniest man in any room, and most rooms let him. It took a subway car, the one room in America where nobody cares who you are, to produce someone who simply didn't wait for her turn. Comedy clubs charge a two-drink minimum to see that. The MTA charges one fare and throws in the smell.

The clip spread the way good gossip does, which is to say everywhere at once. Her bar picked up thousands of new followers, a crowd showed up the next Friday, and the menu now has a drink called the Baby Daddy O'Brien. Shields told CBS New York that 89 seconds changed her life. Conan, for his part, told the Daily News he'd do a sitcom with her, or open a restaurant, or go on the road as a two-act. He's 63, has a podcast empire, an Oscars hosting gig behind him and a travel show, and he's still looking for a better partner. That's show business. Even at the top, a man is one bar owner away from being the straight man.

The sweet thing is that she says she never thought about comedy before. I believe it. Comedy is mostly people who thought about it too much. The rest of us are just waiting for somebody on the train to go first.

Here's the moral, and it's free: the funniest person in the city is never the one with the microphone. It's the one who had the nerve to sit down next to him.