Name: "I Owe Conan!": Bill Burr on Giving his Speech at the Mark Twain Prize for Conan O'Brien
Uploaded: 2025-08-23T17:00:55.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video '"I Owe Conan!": Bill Burr on Giving his Speech at the Mark Twain Prize for Conan O'Brien' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video '"I Owe Conan!": Bill Burr on Giving his Speech at the Mark Twain Prize for Conan O'Brien' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-23. Transcript available.

How to write a funny speech.
Parentheses for a wedding, bar mitzvah, graduation, and every other event you
didn't want to go to in the first place.
Yes.
I cannot tell you.
I cannot tell you how much I needed this book earlier this year.
Really?
Because I have avoided these things.
You see?
My whole life.
I get afraid of these things because.
I'm so surprised.
Well, I do stand-up.
I know, but stand-up.
What's with your shirt?
Hey, fuck you.
I can do that.
But to go up and say something nice.
Yeah.
Because I'm a dick all the time, I've held back all these nice, loving feelings.
And then I feel like if I start to let them out, I'm going to go dick for a
meal.
Like, dick for a meal, one of my favorite NFL coaches, could not give a post-game
speech without breaking down crying.
So I get so nervous that that's going to happen.
So finally what happened was I got asked to do a gig that I could not turn down.
Yeah.
So a friend of mine was getting this award.
Couldn't turn it down money-wise or you owed somebody a-
No, no, not money-wise.
Okay.
It was like, it was for Conan.
Okay.
And Conan has been such in my corner my whole career.
He's the first guy that let me do panel.
Him and Andy.
Like, if Conan and Andy ever need anything-
You're there.
I have to be there or I am the biggest piece of shit that ever-
Because that's how amazing they've been for me.
So he was getting this award.
Yeah.
The Mark Twain thing.
And I was like, you know, Conan doesn't know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you know he knows.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So if I say no to that, you know-
Yeah, he's going to know.
Yeah.
And it's just like, that was a night.
Yes.
That was an event and this was a person that meant so much to me and it was
such a big
award.
I had to be there for him.
Absolutely.
You just had to.
So I said yes and I swear it was hanging over me for a month.
Of what are you going to say?
And I would start to write stuff and I would literally get emotional when I
wrote it, going
like, I'm going to fall apart on this and I'm going to look like an asshole.
I can't do this.
I catastrophize.
So the second I get out of my comfort zone, a comedy club, if there's any sort
of public
speaking, I have it in my head that everything's going to go wrong, everybody's
going to hate
me, my career's going to end and I have to move back in with my parents.
Like that's how far I go.
But what I've found in life is like, I think it's a mountain and it's literally
like stepping
up onto a curb.
Yeah.
So this year I've done three of those.
Oh, okay.
I did.
I did the Conan one.
Yeah.
How did that go, by the way?
It went great.
Well, so what I learned was that what I had to do was say two, three nice
things and then
make a joke.
There you go.
I could do three nice things, make a joke and then I could, or if I'm going to
say something
nice, sort of give him a dig as I go.
So that's how I got through the Conan thing.
But I will say, had I known that John Mulaney was going on first.
Yeah.
Like, because he's the best.
Like that guy is just like ridiculous, right?
Yeah.
So if I knew he was going on first, I would have been like, you don't need me.
I'm not going on.
Like I was sitting, I think I was sitting next to Sarah Silverman at that thing.
And like John Mulaney goes up and I'm looking like, we got to follow this.
This is fucking ridiculous.
And then Will Ferrell and then Tracy Morgan.
I'm like, this is...
One after another.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
That's good to find out the order.